Yogyakarta – Radical Indonesian Moslem fighters who have vowed to launch a jihad, or holy struggle, in the bloodied Moluccas said on Saturday they had been forced to postpone their departure for the islands.

The Ahlus-Sunnah Wal Jama'ah Forum, a loose grouping of hardline Moslems, said they now planned to send fighters to the fabled spice islands in early May. The group had originally planned to ship 3,000 fighters there this weekend.

"There are many obstacles in the port of Surabaya with police carrying out sweeping operations and checks against people going to the Moluccas," Ayip Syafruddin, leader of the forum, told reporters in the city of Yogyakarta in central Java. A rally planned by the Forum in the city on Saturday had also been cancelled, Syafruddin said.

Police in Surabaya, Indonesia's second port and gateway to the scattered eastern half of the country's archipelago, have said they would not allow the Moslem fighters to leave for the Moluccas.

On Wednesday, East Java police arrested three members of the forum at the port but were forced release them the next day when hundreds of hardline Moslems stormed the police offices.

Syafruddin insisted the fighters were going to the Moluccas to help defend Moslems rather than to wage war against Christians. "We promise not to wage war," Syafruddin said, adding that his fighters would not carry any arms.

The forum trained thousands of fighters, armed with swords and sticks, at a heavily-guarded camp near the capital of Jakarta for several weeks. The group says a jihad is a mission to help other Moslems, and does not necessarily involve war.

The Moluccas, a group of small islands around 2,300 km east of Jakarta, have been ravaged by violence between Christians and Moslems since early 1999. Human rights groups say thousands of people have died.

Many fear the arrival of thousands of angry Moslems would reignite Christian-Moslem tensions to fuel violence on the islands which may spread to other parts of the Indonesia's diverse archipelago.

Seven people died in two days of fighting that broke out on Wednesday after a peace visit by Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who has been charged with ending the conflict, local officials in the provincial capital of Ambon told Reuters on Friday.