Indonesia's easternmost province of Irian Jaya was officially renamed Papua yesterday as part of an autonomy package aimed at reducing support for independence.

A sign reading "The Gubernatorial Office of Papua Province" was unveiled by Governor Yacobus Salossa in a ceremony attended by military and civilian officials, the official Antara news agency said. In his address, Salossa urged the public to use the name Papua from now on.

The autonomy law took effect in Papua, on the western half of New Guinea island, on January 1. Jakarta passed the law last year in an effort to appease widespread agitation for independence after almost four decades of harsh military-enforced rule.

Besides the name change, new laws allow Papua to keep up to 80 per cent of revenues from its rich natural resources and permit the adoption of a provincial flag in addition to the national flag.

Independence demands have been fanned by Jakarta's perceived exploitation of Papua's resources and decades of abuses by the security forces, in the form of arbitrary killings, detention and torture.

Pro-independence leader Theys Hiyo Eluay was murdered in November after leaving a military-hosted ceremony. In an interview with AFP last week, Governor Salossa said that "all the data points to the involvement of Kopassus [the army's special forces]" in Eluay's murder.

The Dutch ceded control of what is now Indonesia in 1949 but retained the territory now known as Papua. In 1963, under pressure from Washington, they handed Papua over to Indonesia. Jakarta's sovereignty was affirmed in a UN-sponsored plebiscite in 1969 which pro-independence advocates describe as rigged.

Each year on December 1 independence sympathisers commemorate an unrecognised 1961 declaration of independence.