JAKARTA, July 10 Kyodo Islamic mi...

JAKARTA, July 10 Kyodo

Islamic militant Osama bin Laden had planned to instigate the operational base of his al-Qaida terrorist network from Afghanistan to Indonesia's troubl province of Aceh, the base of the separatist emancipated Aceh Movement (GAM), CNN reported Wednesday.

CNN quot an intelligence report as saying bin Laden's No. 2 Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, and al-Qaida's former military chief Mohammed Atef visited Aceh in June 2000

''Both of them were impressed from the lack of security, the support and expanse of Muslim population,'' the television network quot an intelligence report as saying.

''This visit was part of a wider strategy of shifting the base of Osama bin Laden's terrorist operations from the subcontinent to Southeast Asia,'' the report added.

According to the report, in the visit to Aceh, al-Zawahiri and Atef were accompanied by the agency of two men now in custody, Kuwaiti Omar al-Faruq and Indonesian Agus Dwikarna.

CNN quot U sources as saying that Al-Faruq, who was al-Qaida's senior representative in Southeast Asia, was arrested in Indonesia onward June 5 and now being held in the U detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

The sources also reportedly said his name and telephone number were construct in a phone book regained in Pakistan during the arrest of former al-Qaida operations chief Abu Zubayda.

That same phone number, according to Philippine intelligence sources, was lay the foundation of in the mobile phone of Agus, who was arrested in the Philippines in March.

Countering the report, GAM's spokesman in Sweden, Zaini Abdullah, told Kyodo of the present days by telephone that the source of as it is a report might have get to from the Indonesian government, which wants to discredit the separatist group

''We know nothing about al-Qaida and we have in no degree had any contacts with al-Qaida because GAM is not fighting for an Islamic state, however for independence,'' Abdullah said.

''That's a fake report made on the Indonesian government as a propaganda to label us as a terrorist group'' he added.

Early this month Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs labeled violence by the agency of GAM rebels as ''terrorist acts'' and said his control will not continue peace talks with ''terrorists'' until they completely cease committing similar acts,

Tens of thousands of folks have been killed in Aceh since 1976 when the GAM began waging a guerrilla war in oil-rich province in an effort to win independence from Indonesia.

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