Marianne Kearney, Jakarta – Fears that Canberra is stoking support for Papua to break away from Indonesia sparked Jakarta's strong reaction last week to Australia granting visas to Papuan asylum-seekers, analysts said.

Indonesia, a massive archipelago nation that has long struggled to maintain the integrity of its borders – with enormous bloodshed – is concerned Canberra's move could transform Papua into another East Timor, they said.

"By giving the visas, it at least provides moral support for independence," political analyst Saiful Mujani from the Indonesian Survey Institute, a respected polling centre, told AFP.

Jakarta withdrew its ambassador last week after Australia granted temporary visas to 42 asylum-seekers who travelled there from easternmost Papua on an outrigger canoe in January. The case of one additional Papuan is pending.

The asylum-seekers, who included pro-independence campaigners, accused Indonesian security forces of rights abuses and genocide in the remote province, a former Dutch colony which was only incorporated into Indonesia in 1969.

Mujani said politicians feared that the Papuan group would become a force for change similar to East Timorese exiles who fled to Australia during the 1990s and helped sway public opinion against Jakarta on the territory.

After a 24-year occupation by the Indonesian military, East Timor finally voted for independence in 1999 and became the world's youngest nation in 2002, a move that still has nationalists licking their wounds here.

Canberra's decision to back the referendum and later send troops to quell militia violence after two decades of opposing self-determination for the former Portuguese colony severely soured relations between the two countries.

"There is a precedent in how Timorese activists got protection from Australia. For example (Jose) Ramos-Horta, he even became famous and got a Nobel prize with the help of Australians," Mujani added.

Horta, East Timor's current foreign minister, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 and spent years lobbying for East Timor's independence from his Australian base.

Despite Australian Prime Minister John Howard's firm assertion that Canberra is opposed to independence for Papua, Indonesians are deeply suspicious of their southern neighbour.

"Australia provocateur!" screamed Monday's headline in tabloid Rakyat Merdeka. Under a smaller headline declaring: "Australia wants independence for Papua like East Timor," the paper quoted Australian Greens senator Bob Brown saying Papua had a right to self-determination.

Respected daily Koran Tempo on Friday featured a cartoon of a kangaroo carrying Papuans in its pouch with the caption: "Is this our two-faced neighbour?"

In a weekend editorial, Media Indonesia also accused Australia of "firing its ammunition to shoot an Indonesia which is already injured," referring to the loss of East Timor.

Pro-independence Papuans have long argued that the vote by just over 1,000 of their people to come under Jakarta rule was rigged and that they should be granted a chance at East Timorese-style self-determination.

They have failed, however, to win over mainstream international support and the rebel Free Papua Movement (OPM) is now fragmented and ill-equipped.

Jakarta suspects that a groundswell of popular support for independence could see Canberra make an about-face, just as it eventually did on East Timor, analysts said. "It's possible Howard will change his position," warned Ikrar Nusabakti, an analyst from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences.

Indonesians believed that Australia's speedy issuing of the visas to the Papuans – after the nation attempted to return boatloads of Afghans, Iraqis and Iranians to Indonesia – was proof Canberra secretly backed Papuan independence, he said.

Australians were sympathetic to the plight of the Melanesian, and mostly Christian Papuans, rather than Indonesians or refugees from the Middle East, in Indonesia's view, he added.

Australia's press has pounced on the issue, with heavy coverage over the weekend highlighting the risk of more Papuans fleeing for Australia and criticising Jakarta's administration of Papua.