Shawn Donnan, Jakarta – Indonesia is considering asking the UNHCR to leave Aceh by the end of this month, saying the United Nations refugee agency may have outlived its usefulness and may be straying outside its mandate in the tsunami-stricken province.

An Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman said yesterday Jakarta was conducting a "case-by-case" review of relief organisations operating in Aceh to decide whether they could stay beyond a March 26 deadline. But the spokesman, Marty Natalegawa, singled out the UNHCR as an example of groups that may be asked to leave.

"We are now looking at the UNHCR presence in Aceh beyond March to rationalise what exactly the services are that the UNHCR provides," he said. "We are absolutely delighted and thankful of what they've done in Aceh. But as things become stabilised... we need to rationalise."

Indonesia has long restricted access by foreigners to Aceh, the site of a decades-old separatist conflict that has generated allegations of human rights abuses by both security forces and rebels.

The government opened the doors to the province to facilitate rescue efforts following the December 26 tsunami disaster, which left more than 230,000 people in Aceh either dead or missing.

But Jakarta has in recent weeks slowly begun restricting access again. Last month it began requiring all foreigners in Aceh to register with police and wear special identification.

Authorities have said they plan further restrictions in the future and this week they also denied entry to the country to a noted Australian academic expert, Edward Aspinall, who was travelling to Aceh to work on tsunami relief.

Mr Natalegawa said the government was concerned the UNHCR's presence in Aceh might fall outside the agency's mandate as there were technically no refugees in the province. Robert Ashe, the UNHCR's regional representative in Jakarta, said the agency was seeking clarification from the government on its status in Aceh.

Bo Asplund, the UN's senior official in Indonesia, said the issue of access to Aceh by the UNHCR and others would be raised during next week's visit by Margareta Wahlstrom, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special envoy on tsunami relief.

The UNHCR's response in Aceh had been unusual, Mr Ashe said, because it involved a natural disaster zone, something the body was usually not involved in. But the agency had been planning to stay until at least the end of the year to help reconstruction efforts, having raised almost $60 milion from donor countries to fund the rebuilding of communities.

Mr Ashe said all of that was now on hold. "Clearly we have to clarify what the future of our operation is in Aceh," he said.