'Financial Times': Bomb in Jakarta, Indonesia Kills 3; Philippine Ambassador Wounded
DEBORAH MARCHINI, CNN ANCHOR: A car bomb in Jakarta, Indonesia killed three people earlier today. The apparent target, the Philippine ambassador to Indonesia. He survived.</s>DAVID HAFFENREFFER, CNN ANCHOR: Political turmoil has prevented the kind of recovery that many of Indonesia's neighbors have enjoyed. Hugh Carnegy, of the "Financial Times," has been looking at that development. He joins us now from the "FT"'s London newsroom. And Hugh, what can you tell us on this front?</s>HUGH CARNEGY, WORLD NEWS EDITOR, "FINANCIAL TIMES": Good morning. Well, this bomb this morning, it may not be related directly to Indonesia's own problems. The president of Indonesia said he suspects that it's to do with a separatist struggle going on in the Philippines. Because it was apparently targeted at the Filipino ambassador. But what I think it's done is just added to the political fragility that people sense in Jakarta at the moment. Indeed, the market, the rupia, the Indonesian currency was weakened a bit by this bomb attack this morning. And it comes at a time when the political in Indonesia is looking rather shaky and the president, Abdurrahman Wahid, is today been in a meeting with senior political leaders to try and settle the political background so that they can get on with economic reforms, which are rather lacking at the moment. And, of course, Indonesia is a key country in the whole Southeast Asia region. It's actually the world's fourth-largest country by population. But, as you said, the economy has not really picked up lately, there's still a lot of reforms to be done, there's still a lot of bad debts in the banking system, for example, that haven't really, that haven't been unwound. So people are anxious to see Indonesia begin to get its economic act together, and that would require political stability. And these type of bomb attacks don't exactly help.</s>MARCHINI: Is Indonesia alone in the region as regards the political and economic problems?</s>CARNEGY: Well, there has been some worries, I think, more widely spread in the region that the recovery from the great crisis of a couple of years ago has faltered somewhat. And we've seen that in countries like Thailand as well, and further away, in the Philippines itself, and elsewhere. But, as I say, Indonesia is such country, being such a large and strategically placed country in the region. And people are looking to see economic reform take root in Indonesia. There was a new agreement with the IMF yesterday, and so the loan program from the IMF is going ahead to back these reforms. But we still haven't really seen the economy begin to recover in the way that would give us a drive for both Indonesia itself and a knock-on effect in the region as a whole.</s>HAFFENREFFER: All right, Hugh Carnegy, the "Financial Times," thanks for joining us this morning.