Ruddock says al Qaeda targeting Aust before Iraq

CANBERRA - Terror group al Qaeda had been targeting Australia before 2000 and it was unsafe to assume there would be no terror threat if Australia had not been involved in Afghanistan or Iraq, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said today.

He said he was not surprised at a claim reported today that terror mastermind Osama bin Laden had funded the bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta in September last year.

A total of 11 people, including the suicide bomber, died in the September 9 attack that extensively damaged the embassy building.

The Australian newspaper said a man called Rois, also known as Iwan Dharmawan, told police a courier delivered a bundle of Australian dollars from bin Laden to Malaysian master bomber Azahari bin Husin.

The information came from a transcript of an official police interview with Rois on November 10 last year.

Mr Ruddock said he wasn't surprised, as there were well-known and strong links between al Qaeda and the Jemaah Islamiah Islamic extremist group believed to have carried out the bombing.

Mr Ruddock said the claim showed that those involved in terror activities would put forward reasons for what they were doing.

"But we know that they were targeting us well before and to assume if we had not been involved in Iraq, if we hadn't been involved in Afghanistan, that these wouldn't be happening, I think would be a very unsafe assumption," he told ABC radio.

"The claims that these tragic events are related to our efforts to contain terrorism around the world need of course to be significantly discounted."

Mr Ruddock said the terrorists would focus on Australian responses rather than their original and continuing intentions to pursue terrorist activity.

"This is an organisation that was training people before 2000 in how to conduct terrorist operations, how to prepare, how to use weapons," he said.

"So what we know is that those motives and aspirations on the part of that organisation haven't changed."

- AAP