SYDNEY -- Prime Minister John Howard warned on Friday that sleeper cells of terrorists may already be in Australia as he defended raids by the nation's spy agency on homes of Indonesian Muslim families.
He also warned the raids, by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio), would continue despite a growing backlash in Indonesia over Australia's anti-terrorist crackdown.
H told a Melbourne radio station: 'There were reasons for those raids and I defend 100 per cent what Asio has done. I find it amazing that people could seriously question the national need for this to happen.'
He declined to reveal what Asio was looking for in the raid, but added: 'There is a generic concern that there could be sleepers.
'I can't say more than that. It's a situation where I don't want to use alarmist language; I don't think that really helps anybody.
'We will be going ahead with what we think is in the national interest and can I say that the co-operation between Australia and Indonesia in investigating the atrocity in Bali has been very good.'
The raids, which started at the weekend, have sparked protest in Indonesia, where the government described them as heavy-handed and in breach of international human rights conventions.
In Jakarta, spokesman Marty Natalegawa said: 'We have conveyed to Australia our concern about reports that Indonesian citizens there have been treated heavy-handedly.'
He added that Australian authorities were obliged by international convention to notify Indonesia's diplomatic mission about the plans for the raids and questioning of Indonesians.
All of those questioned during the raids in Sydney, Perth and Melbourne had local connections to Abu Bakar Bashir, the Indonesian cleric who heads the outlawed Muslim group Jemaah Islamiah (JI).
JI is widely believed to have been behind the Bali bombings in which more than 190 people died, half of them Australians. -- AFP
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