FAC News - Friday, June 14, 2002 9:07 AM

Arrests in Malaysia is political: Australian Secret Service

Senior Australian Defence officials have warned the United States about its allies in the war against International Terrorism. It says Malaysia is using the “war” to crack down on political opponents and not to curb International terrorism.

The officials said that the Bush administration's war on terrorism is being exploited by some of its supposed allies for their own domestic political gains and countries like Malaysia are using the war as a screen for domestic political crackdowns while doing little to combat terrorism.

William Arkin, a renowned military affairs analyst, quoted a former Australian intelligence analyst as saying that “some of the evidence from Malaysian and Indonesian security agencies appeared to have been manufactured for domestic political and diplomatic purposes”.

The emphatic anti-terrorism policy pursued in Washington was exploited by the security services to justify draconian steps against alleged terrorists, thereby running the risk of alienating an already skeptical Islamic community, said Mr Greg Fealy, who is now a research fellow on Indonesia at the Australian National University.

”People being arrested in Malaysia are just part of the Islamic opposition,” another analyst was quoted as saying.

Mr Arkin said Australian officials also believed that Washington was not taking advantage of Canberra's insight into the region, gained from its long association with predominantly Islamic neighbours.

He said that many officials believed Mr Bush - and American leaders in general - were in the habit of looking to Australia for troops and diplomatic support but not for analysis and advice.

”They think Washington takes too little advantage of this insight,” he said.

Mr Arkin, a former US army intelligence analyst who has written extensively about military affairs, spent a week with the Australian Defence Force recently.

He said senior Australian military leaders resented what they saw as an imperious US attitude but were frustrated by the fact that any kind of open break with Washington was unthinkable.

He wrote of strained relations between the defence forces and the government of Prime Minister John Howard, who has displayed unquestioning support for Mr Bush.

”I worry about Mr Bush going over the deep end,” one of Australia's highest-ranking military officers said.