US President George W. Bush paid his second visit to Indonesia on Monday and shrugged off protestors' calls for his head as a sign of democratic health in the world's largest Muslim nation.
"I applaud a society where people are free to come express their opinion," Bush said at a joint press conference with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono that capped a half-day stop aimed at forging broader ties.
Bush, who was wrapping up a week-long trip to Asia that took him far from a bitter US debate on the war in Iraq, said he had not yet decided whether to increase, decrease or leave unchanged the level of US troops there.
"I haven't made any decisions about troop increases or troops decreases, and won't until I hear from a variety of sources," he said after talks in this resort town under a heavy security blanket of thousands of troops.
Amid rival calls to send tens of thousands more soldiers or begin a phased withdrawal, Bush promised to detail "the upsides and downsides" of whatever course he eventually charted.
Yudhoyono pushed for greater international help in Iraq and "a proper timetable" for the withdrawal of US forces -- an option Bush has staunchly
rejected.
Reflecting on two other foreign policy flashpoints, the US president said that tense nuclear stand-offs with Iran and North Korea were best left in the hands of the UN nuclear watchdog agency and six-party talks, respectively.
Far from the smiles and happy waves he saw from his armoured limousine at his previous stop in Vietnam, Bush faced intense opposition and even calls for his blood from Indonesian Muslims angry over the Iraq war and the US military presence in Afghanistan.
Leaders of the Alliance of United Muslim Mass Organisations, which groups scores of Islamic groups, called for him to be put to death and denounced him as a "war criminal" and a "terrorist" at a rally of some 2,000 people.
"Kill him, kill him," said one protest leader through a loudspeaker, adding that "The blood of George Bush is halal" -- meaning that it was not a sin under Islam to harm him.
Farida, a veiled private entrepreneur in her 30s, said she came to protest Bush along with other women from the hard-line Hizbut Tahrir Islamic organisation, stressing: "I do not want him to come here."
Asked about such emotional displays, Bush replied, "It's to Indonesia's credit that it's a society where people are able to protest and say what they think."
"And it's not the first time, by the way, where people have showed up and expressed their opinion about my policies," he said. "That's what happens when you make hard decisions."
Islamic scholar Komaruddin Hidayat, one of nine civic leaders invited to hold talks with Bush, said he told the US president that they were trying to battle extremism and asked him to reconsider US policies.
"Implicitly, we said, please, America's foreign policy, specifically on Middle East, they must be revised. Don't be one-sided because the crisis in Muslim world is mostly influenced by cases in the Middle East," he said.
Bush's visit turned this usually quiet resort town into a virtual war zone, with grim-faced soldiers clutching assault weapons standing vigil on the streets and manning roadblocks, and razor wire blocking the way to the Bogor summer palace.
White House officials said Bush was here to emphasise that the United States wants a strategic relationship with Indonesia that looks beyond the flourishing counter-terrorism co-operation since the September 11, 2001 attacks.
"It's a relationship that should last for decades to come. It's important to our nation that we have good, strong relations with Indonesia," said Bush.
Yudhoyono said: "The discussions were open, frank, constructive, sometimes critical, and what is important is that we tried to discuss co-operation on how to make Indonesia-US relations touch on the lives of our people."
The US president and his host discussed co-operation on challenges like fighting corruption and bird flu, as well as US efforts to help reconstruction in Indonesia's Aceh province two years after the devastating tsunami.
Bush left Indonesia late on Monday, wrapping up a week-long trip to Asia, bound for Hawaii -- his final stop before heading to Washington.