Jakarta rejects assassin threat

John Howard has promised to investigate the claims

The Indonesian Government has cast doubt on media reports claiming Islamic militants are planning to assassinate Western ambassadors in Jakarta.

"These reports are not backed by solid evidence," said Marty Natalegawa, an Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman.

Mr Natalegawa was responding to claims that the militant group Jemaah Islamiah had sent assassins to target the US, Australian and British ambassadors.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard said he would investigate the claims.

According to the report, which first appeared in the Hong Kong-based Far eastern Economic Review, British and Australian intelligence organisations had "specific and credible" information that a group of Jemaah Islamiah (JI) operatives had arrived in Indonesia in recent weeks from the Philippines island of Mindanao.

The article claimed that JI had changed its tactics from large-scale bombings like the 2002 attack on Bali to assassinations.

Many Australian tourists were killed in the Bali bombings of 2002

But Marty Natalegawa said that while the government was looking into the claims, it had no information to substantiate them.

"We in Indonesia are becoming increasingly familiar with rumours of this sort, which turn out not to be accurate," he told BBC News Online.

"Then, when they prove not to be true, the damage to Indonesia's tourist industry has already been done," he said.

Hard task

Indonesia's police chief, General Da'i Bachtiar, said police had been searching for the alleged assassins, but had so far had little success.

"There is intelligence information from overseas stemming from a number of people detained in the Philippines," Mr Bachtiar told Reuters news agency.

But he added that, because of Indonesia's porous borders, militants who entered illegally would be very hard to find.

Australian leader John Howard told a local radio programme on Friday that he was seeking more information about the claims.

But he said he would be reluctant to withdraw Australian diplomatic representatives from Indonesia.

"It would have to be a really extreme situation of specific imminent danger to do something like that," he said.

JI has been blamed for the bombings on the Indonesian island of Bali in October 2002, which killed 202 people, many of them Australian tourists.