US envoy meets Papua separatist leaders

JAKARTA, April 16 (AFP) - US ambassador to Indonesia Ralph Boyce held closed-door talks with the leaders of a separatist movement in Papua during a visit to the easternmost province, officials said Tuesday.

"There was a meeting with Praesidium leaders on Monday," a US embassy spokesman, who is accompanying the envoy on the three-day trip, told AFP by phone from the provincial capital Jayapura.

The Papua Praesidium is the flagship civilian organisation campaigning for independence from Indonesia, which has ruled the remote province since invading on the heels of departing Dutch colonisers in 1963. 

Jakarta's sovereignty over Papua, on the west of New Guinea island, was affirmed in a United Nations-run plebiscite in 1969. Independence supporters maintain the plebiscite was flawed.

The meeting between Boyce and the movement's leaders was part of the ambassador's scheduled agenda, the spokesman added.

Boyce held private talks for two hours with 10 presidium leaders in a closed room in a Jayapura restaurant, a member of the organisation's secretariat, Ida Saididan, told AFP. She said she did not know what was discussed.

The presidium advocates peaceful campaigning for independence, differentiating itself from the guerrilla Free Papua Movement that has been waging a low-level insurgency against Indonesian rule since the mid-1960s.

Jakarta steadfastly refuses to consider granting independence but has given broad autonomy powers to the province.

The embassy spokesman said Boyce, as in every meeting he has held in Papua since arriving on Sunday, underlined his support for the new autonomy provisions and discouraged independence aspirations.

"We expressed support for the special autonomy law as a constructive way for the populace to address their grievances and to regain control over their own wealth and freedom," he said.

Secretary-general Thaha Al Hamid, Reverend Herman Awom and Willy Mandowen were among the presidium leaders who met Boyce, Saididan said.

The movement's former chief Theys Eluay was murdered in November last year. Three military officers have been declared suspects in the killing.

Eluay's death and investigations into it have been discussed in every meeting Boyce has held in Papua, said a source at the meetings.

Boyce has also met Papua governor Jacobus Salossa, tribal leaders and military and police officials since Sunday.

The majority of Papua's population are Melanesian Christians. Transmigrants from other parts of Indonesia, mainly Java and Sulawesi, make up the other 42 percent of its 2.1 million people.

The province formerly known as Irian Jaya was renamed Papua earlier this year under the new autonomy package, which also promised a greater share of revenue from natural resources.