Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid on Friday accused the UN and the international community of applying double standards in their dealings with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Wahid, speaking as hundreds of protestors burned Israeli, United Nations and US flags in Jakarta, accused the UN of being "unfair" for failing to condemn Israeli use of force in clashes with Palestinians, which have killed 73 people, mostly Arabs in the past week.
"The world community is unfair. Even the UN was reluctant to convene (to issue a resolution to condemn Israel)," Wahid told a Muslim congregation after Friday prayers at his private residence.
"In Atambua three people were killed and the world reacted with uproar," Wahid said, referring to the killings of three UN workers by pro-Jakarta East Timorese militias September 6 in the West Timor border town of Atambua.
Following the killings, the UN Security Council issued a resolution urging Indonesia to disarm the militias and bring the killers to justice.
Wahid called the visit by Israel's opposition leader Ariel Sharon to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, which triggered the bloodshed, "provocative."
"He (Sharon) is insensitive to the feeling of Muslims," he said.
Meanwhile hundreds of Muslim students protested in two Indonesian cities for the second straight day Friday, accusing Israel of "slaughtering" Palestinians and the UN and United States of inaction.
In Jakarta 400 protestors, chanting anti-US and Israeli slogans, massed outside the United Nations building, charging the international body with failing to condemn the Israeli killings.
They burned flags and tires, and bombarded the mission with balls of clay, then took their protest to the US embassy, where the students, from the militant Front for the Defense of Islam (FPI), beheaded effigies of US President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
The protestors, dressed in white Muslim clothes and turbans, came close to clashing with police when they tried to prevent the police from dousing the burning tyres.
"Save Palestinians from Israeli terror," one of the students' posters read. "The UN is a lackey of the United States," read another.
In Mataram, on the eastern island of Lombok, some 300 Muslim students marched to the provincial parliament building urging Jakarta to "immediately cut off any form of relationship" with Israel, the state Antara news agency reported.
Indonesia has no diplomatic relations with Israel and President Abdurrahman Wahid's plan to open trade relations with the Jewish state, aired as soon as he was elected president last October, triggered widespread protests.
The deputy chief of the provincial administration Abdul Kaffi was quoted by Antara as saying his office would convey the protestors' demand to Wahid.
Indonesia, one of the world's largest Muslim nations, is a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause - JAKARTA (AFP)
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