Jakarta – Indonesia's foreign minister on Friday said the government had imposed new restrictions on foreign journalists travelling to the country's three most troubled provinces, but insisted it was for their own security and was not political, a report said.

"There's nothing political in the policy. This is out of security concerns and for the sake of their safety," Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab was quoted by the Detik.com news portal as saying.

The three regions – the Maluku islands, the scene of two years of bitter fighting between Christians and Muslims, and separatist-plagued Irian Jaya and Aceh – were not under a state of civil emergency, he added.

Aceh's branch of the rights group Kontras said it learned foreign journalists had been barred from entering the three areas. A new notice in special visas granted to foreign journalists states that they are not valid for visits to Aceh, Irian Jaya and the Malukus, Kontras said.

But Foreign Ministry spokesman Sulaiman Abdulmannan told AFP the ban on foreign journalists visiting the three areas was "not total". "It is not a total ban. That was misreporting. Maybe if special security conditions prevail, they could not go there," Abdulmanan said.

Foreign journalists with valid press accreditation documents as well as press visas, he said, should inform local authorities of their presence in the area, and local authorities would have the power to determine whether they could move around or not.

"We would also appreciate it if foreign journalists ... could notify us if they plan to travel there ... and we can contact the local security authorities," he added.

Under the authoritarian regime of former president Suharto, who resigned in 1998, foreign journalists required special permission to travel to Irian Jaya, but that was waived with the new press freedom after Suharto's fall.

Foreign journalists currently in the country do not have the notation in their passports, which Abdulmannan said was hand written. The country's two extremities, Aceh in the far west and Irian Jaya in the east, have seen long-running violent separatist conflicts while more 5,000 people have been killed in the sectarian violence in the Malukus.

Diplomats in Jakarta say they have been under a similar travel ban to the three areas for some six months. They said they were notified of the ban by a foreign ministry circular.