Australian terrorism expert says attack expected

Australian terrorism expert says attack expected Sydney  - Disaffected members of the Islamic terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) are the likely Jakarta hotel bombers, an Australian defence analyst said Friday.

"The signs were there over the last few months that this hard-line group within JI was disaffected with the lack of a bombing campaign over the last couple of years and was clearly intent on doing something," Australian Strategic Policy Institute director Carl Ungerer said.

The Canberra-based institute is government funded but takes an independent line on defence and security issues.

Ungerer said that after the Bali bombings in 2002 around 400 of a total membership of 4,000 had been jailed but they were now being released and some had pledged to continue the violence.

The core of JI decided against violence but hotheads had grown impatient and labelled the JI moderates "NATO - for No Action, Talk Only" and recommitted a bombing campaign.

"The pressure from the Indonesian police and security services and also the backlash that occurred (when many Muslims died in the Bali bombings) has meant that (the moderates) have decided to change tack and to focus on political objectives rather than violence," Ungerer said.

"That view has been challenged in recent times by the hard-line elements within JI," he said. "They don't accept either the rehabilitation programme offered to them in prison or the kind of traditionalist view among JI that there should be a cessation of the bombing campaign."

John Ingleson, an Indonesia expert at the University of Western Sydney, linked the bombings with the just-completed presidential election.

"It could be that the Islamic parties didn't do very well in the presidential elections and it could be that they planned something for immediately after the elections," he said. "These sort of things take a lot of planning so it's been obviously organized over quite some time." (dpa)