Indonesia Clerics to Tell Bush His Policies Aid Terror

Indonesia Clerics to Tell Bush His Policies Aid Terror
Tue October 21, 2003 03:41 AM ET
By Tomi Soetjipto

JAKARTA (Reuters) - When President Bush meets Indonesia's leading Muslim clerics on Wednesday they will tell him U.S. policies in the Middle East, seen as favoring Israel, are one of the root causes of terror attacks in Asia.

But clerics in the world's most populous Muslim nation don't expect the leader of the globe's sole superpower to listen.

"I will tell it like it is. In Indonesia, the majority are not happy with the U.S. stance in the Middle East conflict," Hasyim Muzadi, leader of the country's largest Muslim group, the 40-million-strong Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), told Reuters on Tuesday.

"But I will not pretend that the president will listen to me. I mean, who am I anyway? Just a representative of some group, when even the U.N. is being ignored," he said by telephone from the East Java capital, Surabaya.

Bush's four-hour visit comes at a time when anti-American sentiment in Indonesia is at its highest level in decades over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and Washington's support for Israel, academics say.
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http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=3653493

Bush sees his constiuency as right-wing religious zealots who are sure the Rapture will come any day now, and a group of Jewish neocons whose spokesman is Richard Perle. Muslims are to be demonized so as to galvanize support for ShrubCo.

Security concerns, don't you know.

The 'Chimpy Horror Show' is invading paradise. Maybe Dubya can implement his new endangered species act and bag a Javan Tiger?