Deadly Blast In Indonesia

A terror blast that killed eight and injured more than 160 outside Australia's embassy in Jakarta Thursday turned the country's election campaign on its head and could help conservative Prime Minister John Howard's bid for a fourth term in office, analysts said.

The first two weeks of campaigning ahead of the Oct. 9 election have been dominated by domestic economic topics. National security is seen as a key issue, but was not a major point in campaigning.

That will change now, even though both main parties refused to make political capital out of the Jakarta blast.

The bombing "will echo loudly through the campaign," respected political reporter Laurie Oakes told television's Nine Network.

Analysts were divided on how the blasts would affect the election. Polls have Howard's administration and the opposition Labor Party running neck and neck, but Howard is considered stronger on national security than his Labor challenger, Mark Latham.

International affairs analyst Keith Suter said the bombing could enhance the Howard government's chances of clinching another three-year term.

"At this sort of time when people feel unsure, they prefer to stay with the government they know," Suter told Sky News.

Howard has been one of the staunchest allies of the U.S.-led war on terror and invasion of Iraq.

He sent 2,000 troops to the invasion and still has more than 800 military personnel stationed in or around Iraq. But he has vigorously denied his contentious foreign policy has made Australia more of a terror target.

Latham has pledged to withdraw most of the troops by Christmas if he wins office, while Howard says they must stay as long as they are needed.

Defense analyst Aldo Borgu, of the independent Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank, said lawmakers likely would steer clear of trying to make any kind of campaign gain.

"The first party to (try to) take advantage of it and say we'll be tougher ... as soon as that happens then I think the electorate's going to punish whoever basically tries to politicize the issue," he told Sky News.

Latham announced late Thursday that Labor would suspend all campaigning for two days, but said he would take part in a televised debate with Howard scheduled for Sunday.

It was not clear if the blast was aimed at influencing the Australian election in the way Islamic extremists are believed to have tried to do when they blew up packed commuter trains on the eve of Spain's elections earlier this year, killing 191 people.

Shortly after the Madrid blasts, Spanish voters elected a Socialist administration that made good on its election pledge to withdraw all the country's troops from Iraq.

Howard vowed Thursday the bombing would not change his stance.

"This country will never have its position on issues like that dictated by terrorism," he told Seven News. "And the day any country surrenders decisions on these things to the dictates of barbarism and terrorism is the day a country loses control over its future."

Respected terror expert Clive Williams, from the Australian National University, said it was possible the bombing had nothing to do with the election.

He said the embassy was likely targeted because of Canberra's pressure on Jakarta to keep radical Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir in jail. Bashir is the suspected spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, the al Qaeda-linked group that Indonesian police believe was behind the bombing.

"I think it is also just a general part of their campaign to underline to Westerners that they're not welcome in Muslim countries," Williams said. Jemaah Islamiyah is also blamed in the October 2002 Bali bombing in which 202 people — 88 of them Australian citizens — died.

Suter said if it was an attempt to turn voters against the prime minister as in the Madrid attacks, it was misguided.

"Here in Australia it is more likely, given the fact that we've just had this blast in Jakarta, that people would start looking toward the prime minister for leadership as opposed to thinking there's something wrong with the way that the prime minister has been talking up security issues in the last couple of years," he said.

"We haven't got the level of political cynicism directed toward the prime minister and he should be relatively safe in terms of his own political fortunes on this issue."

Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation, has been wracked by terrorist and separatist violence for years.

On Aug 5, 2003 a car bomb killed 12 people and wounded 149 outside a Marriot Hotel in Jakarta.

As recently as Tuesday, the State Department recommended "that Americans defer all non-essential travel to Indonesia" and urged "Americans who choose to travel to Indonesia despite this Travel Warning to observe vigilant personal security precautions; to remain aware of the continued potential for terrorist attacks against Americans, U.S.- or other Western interests in Indonesia."