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Indonesian spice islands quiet but tense after 300 killed in sectarian fighting

JAKARTA: Indonesia's ravaged spice islands, where at 300 people have died in more than a week of sectarian fighting, appeared calm on Sunday but residents said the atmosphere was still tense.

"We have received no reports of fresh violence. It is quiet today," a military official told Reuters from Ambon, 2,300 km (1,400 miles) east of Jakarta.

Residents said police shot dead eight people on Saturday during clashes between Muslims and Christians, but police denied it.

The clashes are the latest in almost uninterrupted battles between Muslims and Christians in the Molucca spice islands, at the eastern end of this multi-ethnic but predominantly Muslim nation.

According to police figures about 1,500 people have died over the past year in the violence, one of the worst religious conflicts Indonesia has seen.

Regional conflicts, many of them fired by separatist movements, have mushroomed in two years of political and economic turmoil. East Timor erupted in violence in September last year after voting overwhelmingly to break from Jakarta. It is being governed by the United Nations before full independence. Analysts say the movements owe much of their popularity to what is seen as years of abuse in the outer regions by Jakarta which grabbed most of their wealth and imposed brutal military rule in those provinces that stepped out of line.

On New Year's Eve, President Abdurrahman Wahid apologised for abuses in the country's easternmost province of Irian Jaya which he visited for the millennium.

The remote and resource-rich province, which comprises half the giant island of New Guinea, has long been home to a simmering guerrilla movement.

Local newspapers quoted Wahid as saying he would guarantee Irianese freedom of expression though he would not tolerate any efforts to establish a independent state there.

In a surprise gesture to the province, he changed its name from Irian Jaya to Papua, the indigenous name for the region. -Reuters