- JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia,
the world's most populous Muslim nation, issued some of its harshest criticism
of Washington's Iraq policy on Monday, saying the U.S. occupation had not
met objectives and was becoming a debacle.
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- Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda also said the war in
Iraq served as a wake-up call for Southeast Asia to get its own house in
order to prevent similar events in the region.
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- "It is possible the forces of the old regime in
Iraq, aided by foreign fighters infiltrated into the country, will continue
to wage a prolonged guerrilla campaign," said Foreign Minister Hassan
Wirajuda.
-
- "There is the dreadful prospect of the balkanization
of Iraq with boundaries drawn on ethnic and sectarian lines," he also
said in a speech to a security conference.
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- "The various rival factions in Iraq today could
be sucked by that power vacuum into a new and terrible round of internecine
violence -- a civil war."
-
- He said that those developments would pose a threat to
the entire Middle East, and the situation had heightened the grievances
in the Muslim world and damaged the United Nations.
-
- If the various trends continue, "that would make
the war in Iraq a debacle to the cause of security and peace."
-
- The United States has tried hard to make strategically
located and 80-percent Muslim Indonesia an ally in Washington's war on
terrorism.
-
- After a halting start, it has had some success in getting
the world's fourth most populous country on board in regional efforts,
but both the intervention in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq has brought
widespread Indonesian criticism.
-
- Wirajuda's comments on Monday were some of the strongest
from the government since Baghdad fell to U.S.-led forces.
-
- If weapons of mass destruction have not been found in
Iraq "because they do not exist, then an entire country has been leveled
to the ground for no good reason," Wirajuda said.
-
- Wirajuda said it was essential ASEAN -- the area covered
by the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations that Indonesia
now chairs -- becomes a region at peace with itself and neighbors.
-
- "If we can achieve that, we have largely insured
that what happened in Iraq this year will never happen in Southeast Asia."
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