Riau Police chief Brig-General Sutarman told The Jakarta Post that the local police actually stood by their decision to ban the NGOs' activities, which are timed to coincide with the annual meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Singapore this week.

"However, because the authority to issue any permits for such international activities is in the hands of the National Police Headquarters, we cannot do more than that," Sutarman said.

"The National Police Headquarters possibly has its own considerations," he said.

"As [the NGOs] hold a permit, their activities are legal, so local police have no authority to disperse them."

The meeting is to be attended by 700 representatives of 74 NGOs from 40 countries under the coordination of the International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development (Infid).

In preparation, the Riau Police held a meeting to discuss security.

Meanwhile, the management of the haj dormitory in Batam acknowledged receiving a down payment from Infid to lease the dormitory's facilities for the meeting.

The caretaker of the dormitory, Lili Ramli, told the Post that her office had received a 15-per-cent down payment, of 100 million Indonesian rupiahs (just over Bt411,000), from Infid a week ago.

"We have also extended the time limit for Infid to arrange permits from the police. We had earlier given them until Thursday [last week], but we extended it until tomorrow [yesterday]," said Lili.

She said Infid had submitted an agenda for the meeting to run from September 15-17.

The Jakarta Post

Asia News Network

Batam