Iraq on Friday slammed what it called US "blackmail" against Indonesia over the wave of religious violence in the country with the world's largest Muslim population.
"We condemn and reject the method of threat and blackmail adopted by the United States to spread its hegemony to the Southeast Asian region," a foreign ministry spokesman said.
"We reject all interference in the internal affairs of Indonesia under whatever pretext," he said.
"The attacks against Jakarta, notably by the United States, are part of a campaign to divide and weaken the Muslim world," the spokesman charged, quoted by the official news agency INA.
In October 1999, Baghdad and Jakarta signed an accord to expand oil and economic cooperation and they plan to double the value of two-way trade to one billion dollars a year.
Washington, meanwhile, froze military ties with Jakarta because of the violence after East Timor's independence vote last year and it has urged Indonesia to halt a murderous Muslim-Christian conflict in the spice islands of Maluku - BAGHDAD (AFP)
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