Jakarta – Hundreds of Indonesian students shouting "revolution," massed outside parliament here Tuesday to protest June 7 polls and demand the government of President B.J. Habibie step down.

Hundreds of others, who marched towards the parliament without notifying the police, were disbanded by force four kilometres before reaching their destination.

Baton wielding soldiers and police charged into the loose group of some 250 students who had marched from near the University of Indonesia in Central Jakarta toward the parliament, a witness said.

About 50 of the marchers were hauled aboard two police trucks and taken to the Jakarta police headquarters as the students began to disperse shortly before dusk after rallying there for about two hours.

The students rode in a convoy of buses along the city's main avenues brandishing national flags on their way back to the university.

In the avenues and streets outside the parliament complex, a further 300 students from the private Trisakti university student group Kamtri rallied. Dressed in their blue university jackets, they demanded a transitional government be formed, charging Habibie's government was illegitimate.

Another 500 from the Forum Kota student group rallied 500 meters from the main parliament gate, faced by 200 anti-riot troops, an AFP reporter said.

The Forum Kota students, in a statement, called Habibie part of "the illegitimate government selected in a dirty election during the Suharto government in 1997."

"Election: solution or illusion," read the headline of the statement.

Tuesday's student protest was the biggest in the capital since March 4, when some 2,000 students, also demanding Habibie step down, were involved in bloody clashes with riot police.

"We don't believe the 1999 general elections can solve the [country's] problems. We demand the formation of a democratic transitional government in order to have a free and fair election," a Kamtri statement said.

The Trisakti students chanted and screamed behind the high tollway fence that barred their crossing to the front gate of the parliament.

Indonesia's students, in the forefront of the demonstrations that helped topple Suharto in May of last year, see the Habibie government as an illegitimate extension of the Suharto government, but they have been divided on whether or not to support the June 7 elections, which will be followed by the selection of a new president.