Agencies in Banda Aceh and Jakarta – In a bid to ease separatist tensions in the predominantly Muslim province of Aceh, Jakarta said yesterday it would offer Islamic law. The offer came as police forcibly pulled down hundreds of independence flags.

Aceh Governor Abdullah Puteh said after meeting President Abdurrahman Wahid in Jakarta that the President would visit Aceh on December 15 to celebrate the Nuzul-ul Quran, the beginning of the revelations of the Koran. "He will ... declare the implementation of [Islamic] sharia law in Aceh," Mr Puteh said.

Although strict sharia law can include punishments such as stoning and amputation, in Aceh it is more likely to involve the maintenance of more conservative morals and Islamic banks.

In the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, residents hoisted separatist flags to mark the 24th anniversary of the founding of the main separatist guerilla group. Villagers said security forces shot at rebel flags hoisted secretly overnight along main roads in the province before tearing them down.

Police said one officer had been shot to death and another injured in a gun battle with rebels in the north of the province. Security forces also gunned down a motorcyclist on Sunday night in Indrajaya district, east of Banda Aceh, witnesses said. But Superintendent Kusbini, of the joint police-military taskforce, blamed rebels of the Free Aceh Movement for the man's death, saying they had attacked three military outposts during the night.

The exiled leader of the separatist movement, Hasan di Tiro, marked his anniversary by urging followers to keep up the fight for independence. In a message from his base in Sweden, "supreme commander" Tiro, of the Free Aceh Movement, urged rebels not to yield to "colonialist" Indonesia. He said Jakarta was in "political, economic and moral bankruptcy".

Authorities warned they would crack down on any public celebrations marking December 4, 1976, the day when separatists unilaterally declared the province's independence from Indonesia. Since then, efforts by security forces to suppress the insurgents have largely backfired.

Although at least 5,500 people have died as a result of the conflict during the past decade, the separatists have managed to attract wide public support in the province of 4.1 million people.

Rebels maintain that the region on the northern tip of Sumatra island has become a virtual colony of Indonesia's dominant island of Java. They claim Aceh's substantial oil and natural gas reserves have been exploited by Jakarta's political and military elite and that few benefits have returned to the region.