Jakarta – Ten members of a radical Islamic group were arrested in Jakarta yesterday after they tried to force their way into a Sizzler restaurant in a thwarted bid to harass foreigners and protest against the US-led war in Iraq.

The Islamic Youth Movement had also been "trying to stop taxis loaded with suspected foreigners", said a police spokesman. "We intervened and took them for questioning," he said.

Meanwhile, another radical Islamic group, the Islamic Defenders Front, said it was recruiting Indonesians to fight US forces in Iraq. It said it had signed up 430 Indonesians since Sunday but did not say how it would get recruits to the front lines. The group has a history of attacking nightclubs and bars which it says offend Islam.

For its part, the Indonesian government has been trying to downplay local opposition to the war.

Pointing to the peaceful and small protests held across the archipelago since last week, the government complained yesterday that new terror alerts issued by the US, Australia and Britain were unwarranted. Citing risk of further attacks, many Western countries have warned their citizens not to travel to Indonesia – the world's most populous Muslim nation – since last year's bombings on the resort island of Bali that killed 202 people.

London and Washington's warnings cited credible information that extremists may be planning attacks on Westerners in Indonesia as a result of the US-led war in Iraq.

"The demonstrations here have all been in an orderly manner," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Marty Natelagawa. "We are not going to doubt their [foreign governments'] obligations to protect their nationals. But we are concerned that the ... warnings give a skewed impression of what is really going on here."

Early yesterday, police in the port city of Surabaya searched the Japanese consulate after receiving a warning that a bomb had been left there. They found nothing.

In their weekend warnings, London and Canberra said they had information that Surabaya was a likely target for a terrorist attack.

The Australian and British governments were criticised at home after the Bali attacks for not warning their citizens of the risks of travelling to Indonesia.