CIA Issued Bali Warning

The CIA issued a warning in September about a potential terrorist threat to Bali and other tourist resorts in south-east Asia but the state department took no special precautionary measures, a US intelligence source said yesterday.

The CIA warning is at the centre of a growing row - not only in Washington but also in London and Canberra - over whether more could have been done to prevent the Bali attack or at least give travellers more warning of the dangers of travelling to resorts like Bali.

Indonesian police yesterday detained two men on suspicion of involvement in last Saturday's attack that killed at least 186 people; a discharged air force officer was also being questioned. But Jakarta is under fire for failing to do more before the bombing in the pursuit of Islamic radicals.

According to an American intelligence source, the CIA sent a warning to its stations across south-east Asia in the first half of September, alerting them to an imminent attack.

"It mentioned five or six potential targets, including - specifically - Bali," the source said. "The state department didn't act on it and it's become a bubbling scandal."

At the time of the attack, the state department was attempting to persuade the Indonesian government to crack down on groups like the Jemaah Islamiyah, a radical Indonesian movement which has expressed support for al-Qaida.

According to the New York Times, the American ambassador to Jakarta, Ralph Boyce, had given President Megawati Sukarnoputri until the end of this month to act, failing which the US would order all but its most essential diplomats out of the country, in effect designating Indonesia a terrorist haven.

Meanwhile, although the state department issued a general caution against travel to Indonesia, no more urgent warnings were published de tailing the resorts listed by the CIA. The Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer, quoted Mr Boyce yesterday as pointing out that embassy employees were in Bali at the time of the attack, as evidence that the US did not have privileged information about the threat. Three US citizens were killed in Saturday's blast.

The announcement of two arrests yesterday came as Indonesia and Australia, which suffered the most fatalities, agreed to form an international investigation team to trace the culprits.

Indonesia's national police spokesman, Major General Saleh Saaf, said the two suspects are a security guard at the Sari club in Bali, which took the main brunt of the largest bomb, and his younger brother. They are not originally from Bali.

Detectives have questioned them since Sunday after the security guard's identity card was found very close to the crater left by the bomb.

"We're afraid they might run away so they had to be detained," General Saaf said. "They have caused difficulties related to the investigation."

General Saaf also confirmed that an air force lieutenant colonel who had been dismissed last year and lived close to the Sari club was being questioned as a witness.

Bali's police chief, Brigadier Budi Setyawan, also gave more details about the main car bomb. He said it was a mixture of RDX plastic explosive and some sort of nitrate, such as a fertiliser.

Meanwhile in Jakarta President Megawati Sukarnoputri and Mr Downer met for lengthy talks, during which they agreed to make the investigation into the bombings a combined operation, although the Indonesians would retain overall control.

There are about 45 Australian police officers helping to gather evidence at the site of the explosion. Five more yesterday began work at the mortuary at the Sanglah hospital in Denpasar, helping to identify the 140-odd bodies that have not been identified yet.

They were joined by four Scotland Yard officers, two of whom were thought to be specialist family liaison officers; the others were helping with the identification process, which could take many weeks to complete.