Louise Williams and agencies – The forced conversion of Christians to Islam in the violence-racked province of Maluku is part of a wider effort by the Indonesian military to discredit President Abdurrahman Wahid, the Uniting Church in Australia says.

The Governor of Maluku has admitted that forced Islamisation, in which nine people were killed, took place on two of its islands, according to a document by the Catholic Diocese of Ambon reported by Agence France Presse.

Governor Saleh Latuconsina, who named the two islands as Kesui and Teor, acknowledged the forced conversions to a joint team investigating a recent clash between Muslims and Christians on Kesui island, the report said.

This month, a lawyer with the Maranatha Christian centre in Ambon, the provincial capital, Mr Sammy Waileruni, said refugee reports indicated Muslims on Kesui, backed by the militant Jihad (Holy War) Force Islamic group, had slaughtered 93 Christians since late November for refusing to convert. But the diocese report quoted Mr Latuconsina as saying that "only nine people" were killed on Kesui.

The Rev John Barr, secretary for Indonesia and East Timor at the Uniting Church, said the conversions to Islam were the work of "jihad" groups from outside the province that were provoking and manipulating the violence. Local Muslim communities had not taken such aggressive action against their Christian neighbours, he said.

"The 'jihad' is being set up and armed in the same way the militia were in East Timor; elements of the military are causing the trouble to discredit Wahid. The same pattern is also emerging in West Papua [Irian Jaya]," he said.

The British-based Christian Solidarity Worldwide said last month that Muslim militant forces, many from outside the Malukus, had threatened that "there will be no church bells ringing in Ambon by Christmas".

The Jakarta Post also quoted Mr Latuconsina as saying that the joint investigation team had evacuated 172 residents from Kesui and Teor. "Sixty-three were from Kesui island and 109 from the island of Teor. There are still some 800 people who need to be transported off the islands, 700 of whom are Kesui islanders," the paper quoted the Governor as saying in Ambon.

Sectarian violence in the Malukus, formerly known as the Spice Islands, has resulted in more than 5,000 deaths in the past two years.

Allegedly sparked by a dispute between a Christian public transport driver and a Muslim in Ambon city in January 1999, fighting between Muslims and Christians quickly spread through the islands. Analysts have blamed the conflict partly on an influx of settlers from other regions in Indonesia, mostly Muslims, and the alleged sidelining of Christians in the provincial government and public service.

In June, after about half a million refugees had fled the islands, Jakarta imposed a state of civil emergency in the Malukus and the North Malukus but it has so far failed to rein in the violence.