Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid flew to the province of Central Kalimantan on Thursday amid mounting calls for his resignation for remaining overseas during two weeks of ethnic bloodshed in the area which left some 500 people dead.
But the trip ended in violence when minutes after Wahid left the city of Palangkaraya, police opened fire on an unruly mob of protesting Dayak tribesmen, injuring at least three of them.
Wahid, who left the country on February 22 for a Middle East tour, flew into Sampit, the riverside city hardest hit by the carnage that swept Indonesian Borneo, on a chartered plane, a photographer there told AFP.
The president and his entourage made a quick tour of Sampit, after which he went to the provincial capital Palangkaraya for talks with community leaders before flying back to Jakarta.
Shortly after Wahid left the governor's residence in Palangkaraya where the talks were held, police fired to disperse hundreds of Dayaks at a roundabout in front of the residence, injuring at least three people, witnesses said.
The police first fired warning shots in the air but after the demonstrators -- who were protesting Jakarta's plan to return the over 50,000 Madurese who had fled the province -- started to throw stones, volleys of shots were fired, a witness said.
A nurse at the general hospital there said three people were admitted with gunshot wounds, one of them in critical condition. A local journalist who witnessed the incident said he saw at least five people with gunshot wounds, one of them unconscious and bleeding from one eye.
Wahid told local leaders in the talks that the govenment was working hard for reconciliation between the ethnic groups and that if possible, the Madurese should be allowed to return to Central Kalimantan.
"If possible, they should return ... but if not, they will be relocated," Wahid said according to the Satunet online news service.
The bloodletting in Central Kalimantan, where indigenous Dayak tribesmen went on a rampage, killing and beheading Madurese settlers, has forced more than 50,000 settlers to flee the province.
The official death toll stands at about 500 but Dayak leaders -- who have given the Madurese the ultimatum of quit the province or be killed -- put the number killed at close to 3,000.
Wahid's vice president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, visited Sampit in his place last week, in a trip some newspapers in Jakarta saw as proving she could fill the president's shoes.
Wahid has rejected the resignation calls, and on Wednesday the state Antara news agency quoted him as saying that if he did not serve his full term until 2004, there would be an outbreak of separatist uprisings.
Despite heavy security in Sampit, two abondoned Madurese homes were torched a few hours before the visit, district official Zul Rahman told AFP by phone.
"We have also heard unconfirmed reports that a mob of Dayak 'head hunters' are again searching for Madurese" in the town of Samuda, some 44 kilometers (27 miles) upriver from Sampit, Rahman said.
Meanwhile, the military said two men believed to be ethnic Dayaks were lynched in the Sampang district of Madura island on Wednesday by a mob enraged by the Borneo carnage, said Sergeant Eko Sardono of the military headquarters in Sampang.
They were the first reported revenge killings on Madura island.
Analysts have blamed cultural differences between the two communities as well as the economic dominance of the Madurese for the violence.
The government, in statement issued by the presidential secretariat on Thursday, pledged to restore Dayak ownership over their lost land.
Dayaks have accused Madurese of stealing their land but experts have said they lost much of it to government-sponsored logging and plantations – JAKARTA (AFP)
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