Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid said Thursday he had asked pro-independence advocates in restive Irian Jaya province not to use their Morning Star flag any more.
"The Morning Star flag has been misused as a symbol of sovereignty," cabinet secretary Marsilam Simanjuntak said, after a cabinet meeting here.
"In short Wahid told Papuans not to use it any more and told them to find another cultural symbol," Marsilam added, commenting on the outcome of a meeting between the president and Irianese separatist leader Theys Eluai in Jakarta on Tuesday.
It was the first meeting between Wahid and Eluai since 31 people were killed in violence that erupted after police using chain saws hacked down flag poles flying the Morning Star in the Irianese town of Wamena on October 6.
After Tuesday's meeting, Irian-born ethnic-Chinese Yorrys Raweyai, a member of the Papua Presidium who took part in the talks, told AFP they could not comply with the request to forsake the flag.
"Gus Dur (Wahid's nickname) asked us if we could change the image or the cultural meaning of the Morning Star flag for the Papua people, and we told him it's not possible. You cannot change the meaning of the flag," Yorrys told AFP.
"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 Indonesia's chief security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, he said.
Yudhoyono, also speaking after the cabinet meeting, made no mention of a future meeting with Eluai, and said the ban on the raising of the Morning Star flag remained in force.
The Papua Presidium -- formed at a congress permitted by Wahid 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, of which Eluai is chairman, demanded at the congress that Indonesia recognize a declaration of independence made by the Papuan people in 1961.
Wahid 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 saying it now represented a separatist symbol and was no longer a mere cultural emblem.
Wahid has said he will not tolerate independence for Irian Jaya, but pledged broad autonomy for the province within Indonesia -- JAKARTA (AFP)
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