Indonesian police said on Saturday they had arrested a militant Muslim religious leader in a terror probe hours after the government issued two emergency anti-terror decrees to strengthen its hand after the Bali car bomb carnage. The arrest of religious Muslim leader Abu Bakar Bashir will be welcomed by intelligence officials in neighbouring countries and the West who have pressed Indonesia for months to move against him.

The religious Muslim leader has been linked to al Qaeda and a regional network of militants in Southeast Asia. He denies any terror ties.

"He's been captured and arrested. Temporarily he's still in the hospital in Solo. He's sick and tightly guarded," National Police spokesman Saleh Saaf told Reuters in Jakarta.

He said there was "an order letter of capture and arrest" for Bashir, without elaborating.

Bashir entered hospital suddenly on Friday and aides and doctors said he would be unable to travel.
He had been scheduled to face questioning over a bombing in the country in 2000.

A police official in Solo said although Bashir remained in hospital, his movements were under police control and he would be held for at least 24 hours, with his status reviewed on Sunday.

Evidence of the challenges facing the world's most populous Muslim nation came in fresh U.S. and Australian announcements about threats to Westerners in the country.

Indonesia has been under fire from critics for months for not playing its part in the U.S.-led war on terror, but the Bali attack -- a massive car bomb caused most of the damage that took more than 180 lives -- has galvanised Jakarta's will to act.

MIDNIGHT DECREES

President Megawati Sukarnoputri signed emergency decrees just before midnight on Friday giving authorities wide powers to combat terrorism. The regulations are to apply retroactively to cover the Bali bombings.

"Police can detain anyone strongly suspected of acts of terrorism based on initial evidence for as long as seven days," the document said. For that and for longer detentions the threshold of evidence required would be lowered from existing law and the results of intelligence operations could be used.

"Any person found intentionally using violence or a threat of violence that would create terror or unrest among the masses...faces the death penalty," the decree said.

The formal signing and subsequent announcement of the regulations came much later on Friday than expected, suggesting possible dissent from some cabinet members and key politicians.

Critics of such measures, bogged down in parliament before Bali, ranged from human-rights groups who see them rolling back gains won since the fall of the dictatorial Suharto regime in 1998, to Muslims who worry they will be used against peaceful but fundamentalist Islamic groups.

But Justice Minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra told reporters: "Opinions in some sections of the society that the decrees are aimed at arresting militant Islamic leaders are wrong. The government respects and highly regards Islam as the majority of our people are Muslims."

Doubts about the regulations remain in some quarters.

"I hope that an anti-terrorism law will be proposed soon to replace such decrees. If it is allowed in the long term, it could be used for any purposes, not only for emergency purposes," said Samuel Koto, a leader of the National Mandate Party, one of the minority political groups in parliament.

Hendardi, head of the Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association, told Reuters: "The issuance of the anti-terrorism decree...is part of attempts to find a scapegoat as a result of the inability of the (security) apparatus to (curb) terrorism."

AL QAEDA LINK

Foreign intelligence officials believe Bashir is a leader in the al Qaeda-linked regional Jemaah Islamiah network, blamed for planning attacks throughout Southeast Asia. Some have tied it to the Bali attack, which killed mainly foreign tourists, including perhaps as many as 100 Australians.

Police said they were examining Bashir in relation to statements by Omar al-Faruq, an Arab seized in Indonesia in June and handed over to the United States.

A self-confessed al Qaeda member, al-Faruq reportedly also admitted to involvement in a string of planned attacks, ranging from bombings in Jakarta to failed attempts to attack various embassies in Southeast Asia and assassinate Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri when she was vice president.

No one has claimed responsibility for the nightclub attack in Bali. Some 95 law-enforcement personnel from seven countries are working on the investigation run jointly by Indonesia and Australian and dubbed Operation Alliance, a top Australian investigator said.

Federal agent Graham Ashton said international police would travel across the vast Indonesian archipelago if need be to conduct the probe.

"We are getting significant information in. We do have a view (on who is behind the blast), but we are not prepared to say," Ashton told a joint news conference on Friday with the Indonesian police.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard had said on Friday he was pleased with the Indonesian response to the bombing.
But on Saturday the Australian government said it had received intelligence that parts of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, might be bombed in attacks aimed at Westerners. It urged its citizens to avoid certain areas.

"The nature of the specific threats in Jakarta is the threat of bomb attacks in those certain suburbs against Westerners," Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told the Australian Broadcasting Commission.

On Friday the United States advised its citizens in Indonesia "there are continuing risks to their security from violence and terrorist attacks" and urged them to avoid "large gatherings and entertainment/tourist locations" catering mainly to foreigners.

The United States, Australia and Britain have advised their citizens to consider leaving Indonesia and have begun evacuating non-essential embassy staff and family members.

On Saturday the British Foreign Office extended its travel warnings to much of South East Asia, urging Britons to exercise "extreme caution in public places".

In Bali the grim work of identifying the victims continued on Saturday, and was made harder by the fact the massive blast and the fires that followed left many bodies badly burned and obliterated others.

A total of 68 international victim-identification experts are currently in Bali, Superintendent Andrew Tefler from the South Australian police force said on Saturday.

When asked how many bodies he thought would be identified per day given the level of expertise, he said: "I hope at least two to three but it is very difficult to predict."

The remains of some victims are unlikely to ever be identified, officials have said.

PHOTO CAPTION

Indonesian religious muslim leader Abu Bakar Bashir is shown being wheeled into a hospital in Solo, central Java on October 18. REUTERS/Stringer