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oordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Rizal Ramli announced officially on Tuesday that the government had not included Israel in the list of countries receiving free-visa entry to Indonesia, contradicting a statement he made on Monday.

Rizal said that Israel was one of the countries that asked for a free-visa facility, but the proposal was rejected because of the absence of diplomatic relations between Indonesia and Israel. '€œWe crossed Israel [off the list],'€ he told the press on Tuesday.

Rizal announced on Monday that Israelis would be receiving free-visa entry. The inclusion of Israel incited backlash from Muslim organizations including Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI). Rizal acknowledged that he had mistakenly read the names of proposed countries during the press conference on Monday, not the list of countries that had already been approved.

Among the 84 countries set to receive the free-visa facility announced on Monday are Australia, Brazil, China and Georgia, raising the number of countries with the facility to 174