Jakarta  - Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Friday that terrorism would be defeated and urged citizens to prevent the nation's youth from being recruited into terrorism.

"I would like to reaffirm that the nation must not and will not be defeated by terrorism," Yudhoyono said in a state-of-the-nation address ahead of the country's independence day on August 17.

"The government that I am leading will run its course, to protect, serve and improve the welfare of the whole nation," he said.

His remarks came after police said they had foiled a plot to blow up Yudhoyono's private residence, using a truck driven by a suicide bomber, during a raid last Saturday on a house rented by suspected militants involved in last month's bombings at two Jakarta hotels.

The suicide bombings on the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels on July 17 killed nine people, including six foreigners.

Police suspect that fugitive Malaysian-born militant, Noordin Mohammed Top, was the mastermind behind the bombings.

Police said on Wednesday said the man killed in a separate raid in Central Java last weekend was not Noordin, contrary to earlier media reports, but was a hotel florist named Ibrohim who was suspected of a key role in the bombings.

Yudhoyono, who was re-elected for a second, five-year term in a July 8 presidential election, urged citizens in the world's most populous Muslim nation to support the government's effort to fight terrorism.

"Let us protect our citizens and youth from deviant and extreme thoughts which could lead them to terrorism," he said.

Police said the two bombers who blew themselves up at the Jakarta hotels were young men aged 17 and 28 who were recruited through religious lessons.

Yudhoyono said his government would not only take legal measures to eradicate terrorism but also address some of its causes, such as poverty and backwardness.

Noordin, believed to be the leader of a splinter group of the radical Islamist terrorist network Jemaah Islamiah, is also accused of masterminding the 2003 suicide bombing on the same Marriott hotel in Jakarta, which killed 12 people, and the 2004 attack on the Australian embassy in the Indonesian capital, in which 11 people were killed.

In a video message, a man believed to be Noordin also claimed responsibility for the triple suicide bombings on restaurants in Bali in 2005, which killed 20 people. (dpa)