Bali, Indonesia ? U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft urged senior Asia Pacific officials on Wednesday to bolster cooperation to fight terrorism but offered no access to Asia’s leading terrorist, now in American custody.

Australia’s foreign minister told delegates at a two-day anti-terror conference that more terrorist attacks were “inevitable.”

Ministers and other officials from 33 countries gathered on Bali — site of a deadly terror attack in October 2002 — sought ways to pool their resources to battle Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian terror group linked to al-Qaida.

“We have convened here in Bali to deepen our cooperation against those who oppose our shared values and those who would murder innocents,” Ashcroft said.

Delegates are not expected to undertake far-reaching regional accords that proponents say would be most effective in fighting terrorists, such as a joint police force or a policy-making entity to streamline anti-terror legislation.

Nonetheless, Indonesia and Australia on Wednesday announced creation of two anti-terror centers in Indonesia jointly run by the two governments. They also signed an accord on the exchange of financial intelligence to fight money laundering.

In closed-door meetings, some delegates proposed new evidence-sharing mechanisms that would enable governments to keep suspects in prison based on other countries’ evidence, said one delegate who declined to be named.

Others proposed expanding common databases so that information about terrorists could be shared more efficiently, the delegate said.

Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri said it “has now become our common duty” to expand “the current joint endeavors to encompass a wider and more effective cooperation.”

That sentiment was echoed by Ashcroft, who said: “The fight against terrorism is not something undertaken by any one country, any one group … It takes all of us to work together.”

Yet when asked at a news conference whether Washington would grant Indonesia access to Hambali, Jemaah Islamiyah’s purported operations chief, Ashcroft said he was “not able to give a specific time frame” for doing so.

Indonesia has been seeking to interrogate Hambali, whose real name is Riduan Isamuddin, since his capture last August in Thailand. The Indonesian is being held by the United States at an undisclosed location.

U.S. officials have said privately that it’s premature to allow others access to Hambali because he’s still being questioned for information that could help prevent more attacks or lead to more arrests.

Ashcroft took pains to assure Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, that “our war is not a war against any religion. It is a war against terrorists.”

Bali was the site of the Oct. 12, 2002, twin nightclub bombings that killed 202 people, 88 of them Australians. Jemaah Islamiyah was blamed for both that attack and an attack on a Jakarta hotel in 2003 that killed 12 people.