The police chief of Indonesia's Maluku province has been replaced following week-long Muslim-Christian battles in which 38 people died and hundreds of buildings were torched.
Brigadier General Bambang Sutrisno has been shifted to a new assignment at police headquarters in the capital Jakarta, national police spokesman Paiman announced on local radio.
He did not link the transfer directly to the violence. But police in the provincial capital Ambon were widely blamed for bungled handling of an April 25 parade by Christian separatists.
Clashes with Muslims broke out after the separatists marched to and from the police station following the arrest of Moses Tuwanakotta, secretary general of the pro-independence Maluku Sovereignty Front.
Muslims saw the parade as provocative, even though separatist supporters make up only a small percentage of the province's Christian population, and believed police on the ground were protecting Front members.
Paiman said Sutrisno was transferred "to safeguard the situation" in the lead-up to the July presidential election – in which President Megawati Sukarnoputri faces a tough challenge from two ex-generals standing on law-and-order platforms.
Police said separately that Front leaders would face trial in Jakarta for subversion-related offences. Police have arrested 35 suspected members.
"We are still trying to determine who are the top leaders and who are mere followers. The top leaders will be tried in Jakarta while the rest will face justice here," said Maluku police spokesman Hendro Prasetyo.
The wife and daughter of exiled separatist leader Alexander Manuputty are among the suspects. Manuputty fled to the United States last year pending an appeal against a four-year jail term passed in January for subversion.
Maluku governor Karel Albert Ralahalu said Monday that 38 people were killed and 230 injured in the bloodshed. Hundreds of buildings were torched and more than 9,000 Muslims and Christians fled their homes, according to officials.
The violence was the worst since a pact in February 2002 ended three years of sectarian fighting in which around 5,000 people died.
The city was quiet Tuesday. "For a second time in a row, we have had a relatively quiet night, with only one or two blasts heard," said provincial spokeswoman Lis Ulahayanan.
On Monday Indonesia's police chief Da'i Bachtiar, accompanied by a Christian and a Muslim national leader, met civic and religious leaders in Ambon to try to calm tensions.
But a Muslim youth leader and a Christian legislator each vocally protested against being unable to talk to Bachtiar.
Abdulrahman Divinubun, the Muslim youth leader, also shouted that "RMS (separatists) should not be the (government's) adopted child in Ambon." Governor Ralahalu on Tuesday warned that any government employees found to be supporting separatism would be sacked and taken to court. Indonesia's population is 87 percent Muslim but Christians and Muslims live in roughly equal numbers in the Malukus.