JAKARTA: The Saturday car bomb attacks in Indonesia’s tourist haven of Bali makes much harder the balancing act that President Megawati Sukarnoputri has to carry out in dealing with religious groups that have been accused of extremism in the country.

In the last two days, attention increasingly focused on suspicions and theories on who was behind the bombs that caused the deaths of 187 people and injured more than 300 in Bali’s Kuta district.

While many reports speculated on possible links between the blasts and recent arrests of militants in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, Defence Minister Matori Abdul Djalil on Monday named the Al Qaeda network as a suspect.

“I believe that Al Qaeda is linked with what happened in Bali,” Matori said, although he gave no proof for it.

The days since the blast have led to discussions of the toll on Indonesia’s tourist industry, economy and international reputation. But it is the question of who was behind the blasts - and the actions that Jakarta will take hereon - that many are focusing on and likely to have serious repercussions for the world’s most populous Muslim country.

Indonesia is under immense pressure to get to the bottom of the Saturday attacks. While the Megawati government has promised tough action on the group responsible for the two car bomb attacks, how it carries this out — without angering conservative and militant groups — will be a politically sensitive issue.

Conservative Muslim groups already find Megawati too cosy with the United States in its ‘war against terrorism’ after Sept 11 and the renewal of military aid from Washington.

How Megawati wades through the crisis will be the one of the toughest tests of her presidency.

Reports quote sceptics as saying the Bali blasts were ‘too sophisticated’ to have been done by locals. Others suspect they were done by those who wanted to sully Indonesia’s image by showing that it was indeed - as western governments have warned recently - that Indonesia is a place where terrorists are active.

Jemaah Islamiyah, some of whose members have been arrested in the region, aims to establish a pan-Islamic state in Southeast Asia and has been linked by intelligence officials to Al Qaeda.

On Sunday, Abu Bakar Baasyir, chairman of the Indonesian Mujahideen Council and believed to be the head of Jemaah Islamiyah, denied involvement in the attacks. He said, “the US intelligence agency is behind the Bali bombings in an attempt to justify its accusation that Indonesia is a terrorist base”.

But in tightening their watch, Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said governments in the region should proceed wisely — and not forget that terrorists are precisely using Islam to advance their political aims.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.