Mining firms, straining to meet soaring demand, are keen to invest heavily in the region [So. East Asia]. Governments in the Philippines, Indonesia and even isolationist Myanmar want them to come. But locals' doubts about mining, and their suspicion of foreign mining firms, run deep...ill feelings erupted recently in Indonesia's Papua province, where police and troops were killed in clashes with protesters demanding the closure of a copper mine run by Freeport-McMoRan...An official inquiry led by Arturo Bastes...[an] anti-mining bishop [in the Philippines], said all mineral exploitation at Rapu-Rapu should be stopped until a detailed ecological study was completed. The mine's backer, Lafayette Mining of Australia, was already struggling financially, so any long delay in reopening risked causing its collapse. This would have alarmed...multinational companies preparing to invest heavily in the Philippines, including South Africa's Thistle Mining, Japan's Sumitomo, and BHP Billiton...Lafayette's boss, David Baker, acknowledges that his firm failed to win the necessary "social licence" from locals, and that Rapu-Rapu's managers, then mostly foreigners, handled the pollution alerts badly...