Foreigners fanned separatism: Mega

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, New York

President Megawati Soekarnoputri says foreigners have been helping rebels in troubled provinces Papua and Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam to fight for independence from Jakarta.

Speaking before members of the Indonesian community in New York, the United States, on Monday, Megawati said most of the foreigners had entered the country on tourist visas.

"Some of them arrive on tourist visas and go to the provinces supporting independence ... we cannot afford to be stupid," said Megawati, who is in the United States to address the United Nations General Assembly on the country's antiterrorism drive.

On Tuesday afternoon (Wednesday morning Jakarta time), she is scheduled to hold bilateral talks with U.S. President George W. Bush.

The two provinces, according to Megawati, have always attracted foreign interest due to the huge reserves of natural resources there.

"During the tenure of founding president Sukarno, my father, world tycoon Onassis even asked Sukarno whether he could lease Papua for 30 years for a few billion dollars," said Megawati, referring to Greek shipping mogul Aristotle Onassis.

Earlier, Minister of Justice and Human Rights Yusril Ihza Mahendra said the government had decided to revoke the visa-free facility for citizens of some of the 48 countries currently enjoying the facility, after discovering that a number of foreign non-governmental organization activists and researchers had fanned separatism aspirations in the troubled provinces of Aceh and Papua.

Yusril said such activities had gone on for many years.

"The government must take preventive measures to ensure the sovereignty of Indonesia," he said.

Megawati underlined on Monday that NAD and Papua were integral parts of Indonesia and that the state would do whatever it took to keep the country's territory intact.

"We have to share the same perception that Aceh and Papua belong to Indonesia ... if they think they have the right to become independent, then I say every state has the right to defend its territorial integrity," Megawati said.

Megawati said the government would never bow to the independence demands from separatist groups in the provinces.

"I believe most Acehnese want to stay as Indonesians, only four of 19 regencies in the province are dominated by the separatist movement," the President said.

The government has been striving to stamp out separatist movements in both provinces.

The government put Aceh, where the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) has been fighting for independence for the resource-rich province for 27 years, under martial law on May 19 after a fragile peace agreement signed in December collapsed. Close to 1,000 rebels and dozens of government troops have been killed since then.

For Papua, on the other hand, the government decided to divide the province into three and sent more troops there, moves seen by many analysts as a systematic attempt to weaken the Free Papua Movement (OPM), a poorly organized rebel group fighting for independence since the 1960s.

Earlier this month, the government issued a ruling banning all foreigners from entering the two provinces.

Megawati further said that Indonesia should not overreact to the special attention given to the two provinces by the international community.

Asked about human rights conditions in the two provinces, Megawati said Indonesian officials should be consulted before any human rights reports written by foreigners were taken seriously.

"There are many biases in those reports and we should check whether those reports are true or not," she said.

On the possibility of returning to the negotiating table with GAM, Megawati said that the government had exhausted all peace efforts to end the problems.

"But remember it was they who refused to go with the peace plan," said Megawati, referring to the failed truce signed in December.