Red Cross sets date with Irian rebel chief

Red Cross sets date with Irian rebel chief

JAKARTA (JP): A team from the International Committee of the
Red Cross (ICRC) has set a date to meet with Irian Jayan
separatist leader Kelly Kwalik next week, raising new hopes about
the fate of 13 hostages who have been held captive by the rebels
since Jan. 8th.

A spokeswoman for the ICRC office in Jakarta confirmed
yesterday that the Red Cross team finally made contact with Kelly
after trying for a week.

"They have contacted us and we received a letter from them
earlier this week," Sri R. Wahyu Endah, ICRC's information
assistant, told The Jakarta Post last night.

She said there was some confusion because the letter was dated
Feb. 6, and suggested that it might have been wrongly dated.

Asked to comment on the latest developments, she quoted the
ICRC head representative to Indonesia, Henry Fournier, who is in
Irian Jaya, as saying "anything can happen next week."

Kelly proposed in his letter to meet with the head of the
team, but only at a location and time of his choice, Endah said,
adding that this meeting would probably take place in the next
seven days.

Kelly sent the letter in response to an appeal by the ICRC
team, which has been in Wamena for the past week to try to break
the hostage impasse.

The appeal was made to a meeting of leaders of the Amungme
tribe in Timika, Kelly's home village, and by dropping thousands
of leaflets from the air over a large area in the mountainous
Jayawijaya regency.

Kelly's letter was the first contact since the rebels cut off
all radio communications on Jan. 25. The rebels, along with the
hostages -- four Britons, two Dutchmen and seven Indonesians --
have also abandoned the Mapunduma village where they had settled
for the first two weeks. With no further contacts, their precise
whereabouts became unknown.

Antara also quoted Endah as saying that Kelly had insisted
that no other people would be present at the proposed meeting.

She said the hostages sent letters to their relatives back
home through the courtesy of ICRC. Generally, their letter
suggested that they were in fine condition and appealed for a
"positive solution" to the hostage problem.

Before the ICRC intervention, the military and local
missionaries have failed to convince the rebels to release all
the hostages. Some had already been freed.

The rebels abducted 27 people, all members of a scientific
expedition to the Lorentz natural reserve in Jayawijaya. Fourteen
hostages were released -- a German and 13 Irianese -- in return
for food and medicines but the negotiations stopped when the
government refused to meet the rebels' main demand -- a
recognition of a separate West Papua state in Irian Jaya.

The military has stressed that it would continue to use
persuasion to obtain the release of the hostages in spite of
pressures to use force.

Yesterday, the chief spokesman of the Trikora Military Command
Lt. Col. Maulud Hidayat said the military has also left supply of
batteries with tribal leaders in the hope that the rebels would
take them and use them on their radio communications and re-
establish contacts with the military once again, Antara reported.

Maulud said the radio contact might have been stopped because
the rebels had ran out of power. (emb/mds)