Indonesia seeks missing plane with foreign help

MAKASSAR, Indonesia, Jan 4 (Reuters) Aircraft from Singapore today joined Indonesia's intensive search for a plane that had 102 people on board when it disappeared in bad weather four days ago.

Military and civilian rescuers have been hunting for the plane over the dense jungle and rugged mountains of western Sulawesi while navy vessels combed the Makassar Strait between Sulawesi and Borneo.

But the search efforts have been hampered by heavy rains and strong winds, as well as the rough terrain which has made communication and transport difficult.

Senior government officials apologised late on Tuesday for erroneously saying the 17-year-old Boeing 737-400, operated by budget carrier Adam Air, had been spotted on Sulawesi and 12 passengers had survived.

The missing plane was carrying 96 passengers and six crew.

A copy of its manifest showed three passengers as non-Indonesians.

The US embassy in Jakarta said they were Americans.

''The planes are moving, Indonesian military Boeings, two Singaporean Fokker-50s, all of them are airborne. There are three vessels (at sea) and one is going to join them,'' First Air Marshal Eddy Suyanto told Reuters.

The search effort is being coordinated from Makassar, Sulawesi's largest city, 1,400 km (875 miles) east of Jakarta.

Officials had announced late on Wednesday that Singapore would be supplying surveillance aircraft for the search and that the United States was also offering unspecified aid.

''We welcome all kind of help from local people and other countries like Singapore or the USA. We become more enthusiastic with their help and devices,'' Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Firdaus Syamsudin told Reuters.

''The more people who look for (the plane), hopefully the faster we find it.'' TOUGH CONDITIONS South Sulawesi governor Amin Syam said on Wednesday that many rescuers were worn out after following Tuesday's false alert.

Officials said the mistaken information about finding a crash site and survivors came from accounts from a local village that police then relayed to government agencies.

The circulation of the report drew strong criticism from politicans and passengers' relatives.

''I feel fooled. This is what I call playing games with the feelings of the victims' relatives,'' said Peter Tolitton, whose brother was aboard the ill-fated plane.

Joseph Umar Hadi, an opposition member of the Indonesian parliament's transport commission, said annual checks on planes operated by budget carriers were ''very insufficient''.

The confusion over the missing plane highlighted the logistical difficulties of dealing with disasters, from quakes and volcanoes to floods and forest fires, in an archipelago of 17,000 islands that stretches about as wide as the United States.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has ordered a full investigation into the condition of all commercial planes in Indonesia and what went wrong in the Adam Air case, as well as an evaluation of the nation's transportation system.

Adam Air's plane disappeared less than three days after a ferry capsized and sank off Indonesia's main island of Java.

Officials say at least 239 of those on the ferry have been rescued since it sank overnight Friday, but nearly 400 more are unaccounted for and many dead have been unofficially reported.

Ferries are ubiquitous in Indonesia as an inexpensive way to travel among its many islands, while air travel has mushroomed since the industry was liberalised in the late 1990s, enabling privately owned budget airlines to operate.

REUTERS PDM RK0930