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Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 04:19:29 -0800 (PST)
From: Rick Rozoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Traveling Spy Circus Lands In Southeast Asia
http://europe.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/southeast/03/13/malaysia.fbi/index.html
CNN News
March 14, 2002
Traveling terror summit lands in SE Asia
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia --The secretive roaming summit
of international security heads, among them the head
of America's FBI, has moved on to Malaysia and
Singapore.
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Robert
Mueller was scheduled to discuss the latest
developments in the war on terrorism with officials in
those countries, after low profile visits to Australia
and New Zealand earlier in the week, reported
Associated Press news agency.
Mueller and around 20 senior officials from the FBI,
the CIA, Britain's MI6 and other agencies were due to
arrive in Malaysia on Wednesday and travel to
Singapore on Thursday. On Friday they will visit
Indonesia, the world most populous Islamic nation.
A Malaysian official, speaking on condition of
anonymity, said Mueller would meet top police officer
Norian Mai early Thursday before heading to Singapore,
but no talks were planned with Deputy Prime Minister
Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who is also home minister in
charge of the police.
In Singapore, Mueller will "discuss joint actions
against crime of all kinds but focusing on terrorist
activities," a U.S. Embassy official there said on
condition of anonymity.
Authorities in the two countries have arrested dozens
of alleged militants suspected of planning attacks
against U.S. targets.
Indonesia criticized
Mueller will travel to the Indonesian resort island of
Bali on Friday, said Stan Harsha, U.S. embassy
spokesman in Jakarta. He will leave Indonesia on
Saturday.
"Mueller will meet with senior Indonesian government
officials to discuss ways to build on existing
cooperation in the war against terror," said. He
refused to say who Mueller would be meet, or what
specific issues would be addressed.
Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, has
been criticized by U.S. and regional leaders for being
slow to crackdown on terrorists allegedly operating
within its porous and poorly policed borders.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation chief has become a
diplomat recently, encouraging cooperation among
foreign law enforcement agencies to track down and
disrupt operations by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida
network.
The visit to Malaysia follows an assertion by Abdullah
that no al-Qaida cell has operated in this Southeast
Asian country, though al-Qaida operatives have met
here and had allies among Malaysian extremists.
Two of the hijackers who crashed a jetliner into the
Pentagon on September 11 met in an apartment owned by
Yazid Sufaat, a former Malaysian army captain, in
2000.
Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan
origin jailed in the United States on charges of
conspiracy in the hijackings, also received assistance
from Yazid that year.
Terror threat not disappeared'
Yazid is among dozens of people rounded up in Malaysia
and Singapore since December in connection with an
alleged plot to bomb the U.S. Embassy and other
targets in Singapore.
The suspects include Malaysians, Singaporeans and
Indonesians belonging to a network affiliated with
al-Qaida who allegedly wanted to establish an Islamic
state across Malaysia, Indonesia and the southern
Philippines, an area home to about a quarter-billion
Muslims.
In Australia, Mueller held talks Tuesday with Prime
Minister John Howard and other senior ministers.
Earlier, he addressed a conference of U.S., British
and New Zealand intelligence officers in New Zealand
that the government kept secret until a day after it
finished.
Both Australia and New Zealand have committed elite
commando units to the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.
In Australia, Mueller warned that the U.S.-led action
in Afghanistan should not prompt governments to let
down their guard.
"He made it clear that there are no grounds for
thinking that the terrorist threat has disappeared," a
spokesman for Howard was quoted as saying by AP on
Wednesday.
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