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Indonesian Intelligence Figure Says State Department Terror Report a Fraud

Indonesian Expert Says U.S. Returning to the Cold War

South Korean Paper Accuses U.S. of Stalling Talks with North Korea

Japanese Paper: China Taking 'Anti-Free-Trade' Actions To Protect State Industries

From the Vol.1,No.13 issue of Electronic Intelligence Weekly
Asia News Digest

Indonesian Intelligence Figure Says State Department Terror Report a Fraud

The former Indonesian intelligence chief, Maulani, called the recently released U.S. State Department annual terrorism report an economically motivated fraud. According to Agence France Presse from Jakarta, he said the main aim behind the U.S. accusation that Indonesia harbors al-Qaeda and other terrorists was to weaken the forces of Islam in Indonesia and to control its abundant natural resources. "To maintain its sole superpower position, its war and economic industries should survive, and they need oil. The world's largest oil producers are in the Islamic world and that is why there is a need for U.S. hegemony over the Islamic world," he charged.

Maulani said he believed the United States was bent on dividing Indonesia into smaller states so that none will have the power or capability to stand up to the Americans. "They are applying a preventive strategy, to prevent Islamic countries, including Indonesia, from becoming advanced countries."

Indonesia should do all it can, he said, to safeguard national dignity in the face of such pressure, which was made difficult due to the huge foreign debt. "There is no dignity in the international world for debtors and the worst thing is that we are the world's largest debtor," Maulani said.

Indonesian Expert Says U.S. Returning to the Cold War

"I am afraid Mr. Dulles is leaving the airport behind, and returning to politics—the U.S. seems to be moving back to the Cold War." So said Indonesia's foremost expert on military-civilian affairs, Professor Salim Said of the University of Indonesia, speaking in Washington at a USINDO Society meeting on military reform in Indonesia. In response to a question from EIR regarding his view of the utopian permanent-warfare faction around the Wolfowitz cabal in the Administration and Congress, Said said: "In the 1960s, the U.S. thought that democracy was not working in Indonesia, and that there were only two choices: either Communism or a military dictatorship. So it supported a military takeover against the father of this President, Megawati Sukarnoputri, and the PKI (The Indonesian Communist Party). I apologize for saying this, but it was asked. You Americans must learn to be more patient. The New York Times reports all the time that there are terrorists all over Indonesia, and that Indonesia must give up its new democratic laws against arrests without cause, and go out and arrest all these people you say are terrorists. I am afraid America will now say that Megawati and the Indonesian democracy will not be able to defeat the terrorists, so you will again support a military dictatorship."

He also said that Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, who keeps telling Indonesia to arrest terrorists, "is seen now as an agent of America, of doing their bidding." He quoted an Indonesian General to the effect that Indonesia, too, placed "conditions" on U.S. assistance and investment—that the two countries must be equal partners, not one pushing the other around.

South Korean Paper Accuses U.S. of Stalling Talks with North Korea

"U.S. Blamed for Stalling Talks with NK" was the headline in the May 29 Korea Times headline, a thinly disguised leak from South Korea's Presidential palace aimed to pressure the utopians in the Bush Administration to stop the sabotage. "The envisioned dialogue between North Korea and the United States has long been delayed because key policymakers in the U.S. Administration have shown conflicting approaches, according to sources in Seoul," the KT wrote. Talks were originally to take place in June with a visit to Pyongyang by U.S. Ambassador Jack Pritchard, arranged in April at a meeting of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and President Kim Dae-jung's special envoy, Lim Dong-won.

"Sources attribute the delay to the failure of the U.S. in working out a delegation, timing, and a specific agenda for the talks. The functional specialists in the U.S. State Department, represented by Under Secretary John Bolton, have been disputing with regional (Asia) specialists led by Assistant Secretary James Kelly," they report, with lunatic Bolton insisting the U.S. must "mobilize for military options against Pyongyang" and "[wield] considerable clout in the U.S. foreign policy arena."

"Pentagon officials have been maintaining the upper hand over State Department counterparts on security issues, including those on the Korean peninsula," another "observer" was quoted as saying. The Pentagon (that is, the Wolfowitz-Perle utopians) he said, are "insisting on no dialogue for its own sake," to wit: We won't talk just to talk; we must first be assured of the results we demand. Their demands include deal-breakers such as the ultimatum that North Korea remove its million-man army from the edge of the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas.

Japanese Paper: China Taking 'Anti-Free-Trade' Actions To Protect State Industries

China is having to take "anti-free-trade" actions to protect state-run industries, even after having joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Japanese paper Asahi Shimbun reported May 29. Beijing "is likely to incur the wrath of other nations with its anti-free-trade actions, such as tariffs on steel imports and anti-dumping investigations into chemicals," the article stated.

In accordance with WTO rules, Beijing lowered steel tariffs in January, but, especially after the U.S. imposed its "safeguard import curbs," China's steel imports from Japan and other countries jumped 28% year-on-year during January-April. The price of thin steel sheets has fallen 15%, and large steel producers have faced profit crashes of 6-7%.

Also, Chinese enterprises have complained about the dumping of foreign chemical products. Hebei Cangzhou Dahua Co., a big chemical producer, is down to working at only several thousand tons of its 30,000-ton manufacturing capacity, due to low-cost imports.

The China Business Times on May 20, according to Asahi, complained that the government moves towards reintroducing protection would prop up weaker state enterprises and force consumers to use lower-quality Chinese steel. "Private firms ... have been betrayed by the government's change in tactics. Beijing wants to protect state-run firms to prevent a surge in unemployment," complained the Asahi article.

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