Indonesia anti-Israel volunteers show martial skills

JAKARTA, Aug 5 (Reuters) About 200 men in black masks said to be ready to die in anti-Israeli actions around the world demonstrated martial arts skills today on Indonesia's part of Borneo island, witnesses and TV reports said.

They are among groups being trained to carry out suicide bombings to revenge Israel's military strikes on the Palestinian territories and Lebanon, according to Suaib Didu, chairman of the Jakarta-based ASEAN Muslim Youth Movement (AMYM).

''We will wait for four days. If within four days, the aggression still continues they will move,'' Didu said today of the men exercising in a field in Pontianak, capital of West Kalimantan Province on Borneo.

He told Reuters by telephone from Pontianak that funding for the activities was coming from Malaysian businessmen.

Yesterday, Didu had predicted there would be 3,000 volunteers in the ''show of force'' in Pontianak.

He also said more than 3,000 people had signed up for missions and 217 people from Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore had already been dispatched abroad.

Western countries such as the United States and Britain as well as businesses could be targeted unless they ceased supporting Israel, Didu said.

Hardline militant groups in Indonesia have made claims in the past of sending volunteers overseas which have sometimes proved exaggerated.

Din Syamsuddin, chairman of the moderate Muhammadiyah, Indonesia's second largest Muslim organisation, said earlier this week that threats by radical Muslim groups to fight Israel were just ''symbolic gestures''.

Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation. Most of the 85 per cent of the country's 220 million people who follow Islam are considered moderates, but there is widespread pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli sentiment.

Indonesia does not recognise Israel diplomatically. The country's foreign ministry says it would not advise volunteers to go to the West Asia and wage war against Israel, but it also could not stop travel of citizens in general.

REUTERS SY PC1650