Indonesia, Pakistan seal anti-terror pact

The agreement was announced by Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf after talks with his Indonesian counterpart Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

"We are both victims of terrorism and therefore we need to cooperate to fight this scourge," Musharraf told a news conference, with the Indonesian president by his side.

"We have discussed and agreed to cooperate in the intelligence field, to address and confront the issue of terrorism jointly," Musharraf said.

Yudhoyono, on a two-day official visit to Pakistan, arrived from India earlier on Thursday.

Both Indonesia and Pakistan are battling Islamist militancy.

Pakistan militant groups that forged ties with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda in Afghanistan during the 1990s were enraged by Musharraf's decision to side with the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on Washington and New York.

A few hard-core Southeast Asian militants also trained with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan before returning home to join groups like Jemaah Islamiah, the group responsible for bomb attacks on nightclubs on the Indonesian island of Bali in 2002.

Some Southeast Asians attended Islamic religious schools, or madrasas, in Pakistan that were known to be recruiting grounds for militant organisations.

Pakistan decided earlier this year that foreign students would not be given visas to attend madrasas, and ordered those already in the country to return home.

Meanwhile, Indonesia plans to start buying military equipment from the United States in January following the lifting of an arms embargo, and will prioritise transport aircraft, the defence minister said yesterday.

But the minister, Juwono Sudarsono, stressed that Indonesia would keep looking to other countries for its defence needs.

"We are still evaluating the best packages for our military equipment based on our budget," he said.

On Tuesday, Washington lifted a six-year embargo on arms sales to Indonesia.