Police, land agency sign MOU

JAKARTA: National Land Agency (BPN) head Luthfi I. Nasution and National Police chief Gen. Da'i Bachtiar agreed to further cooperation in investigating agrarian disputes on Friday.

Luthfi said BPN expected the cooperation would settle civil land disputes across the country, particularly on land ownership document forgery.

"This kind of forgery has caused huge economic losses, particularly if the fake documents are submitted to a bank as collateral to get loans," he said.

Currently, Luthfi said, there are more than 3,600 land disputes across the country. -- JP

;JP;EVI; ANPAa..r.. Scene-maternal-maternity Universities to promote safe motherhood JP/4/scene3

Maternal mortality rate investigation

JAKARTA: An international organization has agreed to research Indonesia's high maternal mortality rate to help formulate a strategy to reduce the death rate.

The research will be conduced by the Initiative for Maternal Mortality Program Assessment (IMMPACT) in cooperation with the University of Indonesia.

Minister of Health Achmad Sujudi, during the launch of the program, said efforts to curb the death rate since 1988 had failed to live up to expectations.

Figures released in 1997 show that every year 17,000 mothers die during or after delivering a baby. The figure is triple the average rate in Southeast Asia and 50 times the rate in developed countries.

IMMPACT consists of researchers from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, England's London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the University of York, John Hopkins University in the United States, and the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Belgium. -JP

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UNICEF awards RI children

JAKARTA: Sixteen children have been nominated by non- governmental organizations and the government for the inaugural United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Award for Youth Leadership in East Asia and the Pacific.

The winners will be announced on May 6, during the 6th East Asia and Pacific Ministerial Consultation on Children, to take place in Bali from May 5 to May 7.

"Unicef wants to ensure Indonesian children have a voice in the decisions affecting them. And this is one way of demonstrating that the work and actions of children have made a contribution," UNICEF's representative to Indonesia Steve Allen said in a press release.

The regional director of UNICEF, Mehr Khan, said the award would become a regular event in the region to correspond with each ministerial consultation, the next to be held in two years. -- JP

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Indonesia, minus East Timor

JAKARTA: The government has released a new map of Indonesia, which scraps now independent East Timor and the Malaysian-owned islands of Sipadan and Ligitan.

The map, to a 1:5,000,000 scale, was launched in conjunction with National Education Day on Friday.

Head of the Coordinating Body for Survey and National Mapping, Rudolf W. Matindas, said it in cooperation with and the Ministry of Fisheries and Maritime Affairs had completed the map.

Rudolf said the territorial borders and the Exclusive Economic Zone were drawn according to international law and bilateral agreements with neighboring countries. --JP