Reuters in Jakarta – Separatist leader Thom Beanal says Indonesia's eastern Irian Jaya province could be independent by 2003 but freedom may have a bloody price, as it did in East Timor.

Mr Beanal said yesterday separatists planned to convene a congress later this year to map out a strategy for independence, which they want to achieve through dialogue with Jakarta.

"I want freedom. I don't want anything from Indonesia. I just want Indonesia to give us independence," he said in Jakarta. "Papuan people want independence through dialogue."

But he feared elements in the Indonesian military would try to thwart any move towards separation, as they did in East Timor, where thousands are believed to have been killed after voting for independence last August.

He warned that ethnic Javanese migrants, who many Papuans see as allies of the military, would be particularly vulnerable.

"I am a bit scared," he said. "If the military is hard the people will be hard, but they will not kill the military. They will kill Javanese migrants because they don't have weapons."

Hundreds of thousands of Javanese have gone to Irian Jaya, many under a government-backed scheme, since it joined Indonesia under a controversial UN deal in 1963.

The congress, still in the planning stage, should take place later this year in the provincial capital, Jayapura, Mr Beanal said.

Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid, in a gesture to separatist sentiment, has said the province should be renamed Papua.