Gus Dur calls on Irianese to change symbol

JAKARTA (JP): President Abdurrahman Wahid said on Thursday he had asked proindependence supporters in Irian Jaya to pick another cultural symbol to replace the Morning Star flag.

"The Morning Star flag has been misused as a symbol of sovereignty or independence," Cabinet Secretary Marsilam Simanjuntak said after a Cabinet meeting.

"The President said that (the Morning Star flag) should not be used any more and told them to find another cultural symbol," Marsilam added.

Marsilam was briefing reporters on the outcome of a meeting between Abdurrahman and Irianese independence leader Theys Eluai in Jakarta on Tuesday, held for the first time since 30 people were killed in violence that erupted after police forcibly pulled down the Morning Star flags in the Irian town of Wamena on Oct. 6.

After Tuesday's meeting, proindependence Papua Presidium Council member and former Golkar supporter Yorrys Raweyai, who also took part in the talks, said his group could not comply with the request to forsake the flag.

"Gus Dur asked us if we could change the image or the cultural meaning of the Morning Star flag for the Papuan people, and we told him it's not possible. You can't change the meaning of the flag," Yorrys was quoted by AFP as saying.

"We decided to form a joint team made up of government and (Papua) presidium members to find a solution and to reach a common perception," he added.

The next step was to seek a meeting with Coordinating Minister for Political, Social and Security Affairs Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, he said.

Susilo, also speaking after the Cabinet meeting, made no mention of a future meeting with Theys, who is a former provincial legislator representing Golkar, and said the ban on the raising of the Morning Star flag remains in force.

The Papua Presidium - formed at a congress permitted by Abdurrahman in June of this year - maintains that a UN-supervised act of free choice in Irian Jaya in 1969 under which the former Dutch colony became a part of Indonesia, was flawed and unrepresentative.

The presidium, which They chairs, demanded at the congress that Indonesia recognize a declaration of independence made by the Papuan people in 1961.

Abdurrahman had earlier allowed the flag to be flown on the condition that it was raised alongside and lower than the national flag.

But since the Wamena incident the raising of the flag has been banned by the government. Abdurrahman has said he will not tolerate independence for Irian Jaya, but pledged broad autonomy for the province within Indonesia. (byg)