The first meeting was in a cramped room in the city of Solo, with a young Indonesian follower of the fundamentalist preacher, Abu Bakar Bashir; the second was in a lovely house in Jakarta with an expensively suited Western diplomat.

The fundamentalist wanted to convince me of two things: that the Bali bombings were carried out by the CIA to smear the reputation of Indonesian Muslims; and that Mr Bashir was an innocent man.

The diplomat believed the opposite: that Mr Bashir was the leader of a terrorist network called Jemaah Islamiyah. One man was uneducated and halting, the other suave and articulate — but they had one thing in common: they offered no convincing proof of their claims.

The fundamentalist spoke of “reports” and “analyses” proving the CIA connection. The diplomat spoke of evidence provided by al-Qaeda suspects under American interrogation. Neither was prepared to show me any of this evidence; both required me to take it on trust.And each, in his own way, was entirely untrustworthy.

There is no good reason to believe that the CIA killed nearly 200 tourists and Balinese, and I suspect that my fundamentalist friend knew it. Yet there is no more reason for believing in the open-and-shut case being propagated by the West and reluctantly embraced by the Indonesian Government.

Unquestionably, Mr Bashir is a man of extreme views and suspicious friends. Someone has been planting bombs in Indonesia — the Bali explosions were just the bloodiest of a string of incidents — but, even as Mr Bashir was removed to Jakarta yesterday for questioning, none of his accusers had produced any convincing reason for believing that he was behind them or that the organisation he is said to run, Jemaah Islamiyah, exists in the way that they describe it.

The majority of Indonesians have very little faith in the case against Mr Bashir. They are moderate Christians, Hindus and Buddhists, as well as Muslims, and know that, as it is presently being fought, the campaign against terrorism in Indonesia will divide the country, alienate its natural supporters and play into the hands of those it seeks to eliminate.

Take Jemaah Islamiyah, which last week David Blunkett proposed be added to Britain’s list of terrorist organisations. Until early this year it was unknown. Indeed, the phrase jemaah islamiyah refers to “Islamic communities”, scores of which have existed for decades all over South-East Asia. To describe it as a terrorist organisation, rather than as a casually linked network of varied and overlapping beliefs, is stretching the facts further than they will go.

Similarly unconvincing is the case against Mr Bashir. According to the senior Western diplomat, it rests almost entirely on one man, Omar al-Faruq, a Kuwaiti citizen who until this year lived with his Indonesian wife in West Java. Mr al-Faruq was arrested by Indonesian police and handed over to the United States. Since then, he has become a man without rights; the Americans refuse even to say in which country he is being held. They claim that he has turned informer, describing to them how al-Qaeda agents entered Indonesia to establish contact with local sympathisers. Indonesian police, who have also interviewed him, claim that he has implicated Mr Bashir in a string of bombings two years ago. And all of this we are asked simply to accept.

Most liberal Indonesians do not. They remember the Fifties and the Sixties, when fundamentalist Muslims who revolted against the Government of the day were, indeed, supported by the CIA. They observe America’s sympathies in the struggles between Muslims and Jews in the Middle East.

And presented with two unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, they are more likely to believe the young fundamentalist than the elegant Western diplomat in his handsome suit.

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