Indonesia Tightens Security Ahead of Clinton Visit

By IRWAN FIRDAUS / AP WRITER

JAKARTA — Thousands of security forces were being deployed in the Indonesian capital ahead of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's visit to the world's most populous Muslim nation—the second stop on her Asian tour, officials said.

Clinton arrives Wednesday for talks that are expected to focus on Southeast Asia's growing importance in the region, the Iranian nuclear dispute and the war in Afghanistan, said Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda.

He was encouraged that Indonesia, childhood home to President Barack Obama, was among her first trips abroad as America's top diplomat.

Obama probably wants to capitalize on his emotional ties to the nation of 235 million as he seeks to improve relations with the rest of the Muslim world, said Christianto Wibisono, an expert on US-Indonesian relations.

The government "should capitalize on that access," he said, pointing to the need for increased US investment, military training and education of moderate Muslims to combat a growing extremist threat.

Bantarto Bandoro, a foreign policy expert at the University of Indonesia, said the United States' main goal will be to make sure Indonesia—a former dictatorship that has in the last decade seen citizens vote directly for president, freed up the media and struck down repressive laws—continues to move toward full-fledged democracy.

The fear is that any backward slide could threaten stability in region, Bandoro said.

Security was tight ahead of Clinton's visit, with 2,800 police being deployed in Jakarta along with members of the army and the US Secret Service, said Col Zulkarnain, who like many here uses only one name.

Indonesia, often held up as a beacon of Islamic democracy and modernity, is a secular nation.

Most of its 190 million Muslims practice a moderate form of the faith, but public anger ran high over US foreign policy in the Middle East and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush years, fueling a small but increasingly vocal fundamentalist fringe.

The Southeast Asian militant group, Jemaah Islamiyah, has carried out a series of suicide bombings in Indonesia targeting Western interests since 2002, killing more than 240 people, many of them foreign tourists. But experts say a police crackdown has severely weakened the movement, the last attack occurred more than three years ago.