Jakarta – Most Indonesians and parliament would back the government if it imposed civil emergency status on the rebellious Aceh region, Indonesia's top security minister said on Thursday.

Civil emergency is one step down from martial law and would give wide security powers to authorities such as imposing curfews and searching houses at random in Aceh where thousands have died as a result of fighting between government troops and separatist rebels.

Jakarta expects to announce new Aceh policies in early August after expressing mounting frustration over recent bloodshed, which prompted chief security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to fly to the region for a week's inspection earlier this month.

"The house commission has urged the government to conduct firm steps ... implicitly and explicitly giving the support when the government reaches [the decision] to impose a civil emergency status," Yudhoyono told a news conference in Jakarta.

"That means the government steps have obtained the support of the parliament and the majority of Indonesian people. So, we now have a strong legitimacy," he said.

Yudhoyono also said Jakarta wanted rebels from the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) to fulfil some conditions before peace talks between the two parties, begun in 2000, could resume.

"Dialogue can be conducted with prerequisites that first the commitment from the armed separatists to accept the special autonomy must be obeyed," he said. "Secondly, [their] attacks on civilian targets must stop. We will convey this to [the talks facilitator] at once."

The series of peace talks between Jakarta and GAM held in Switzerland has failed to stop the cycle of violence in the area on the northernmost tip of Sumatra island, some 1,700 km northwest of Jakarta. Earlier this month, Yudhoyono branded GAM as "terrorists" for alleged involvement in the murders of members of the provincial parliament, civilian abductions and school burnings.

But when he visited resource-rich Aceh last week, most Acehnese rejected the idea of emergency status in an area where military efforts have failed to eliminate the 25-year-old separatist movement.

Underscoring the tense conditions in Aceh, Indonesian security forces and GAM rebels on Thursday claimed battle successes against each other the day before. GAM said its forces killed at least nine soldiers, while a military spokesman told Reuters no one on the government side was killed but troops had shot dead at least 11 rebels.

Clashes between the two warring sides occur daily in remote areas in Aceh's forest, frequently leaving civilian casualties. The International Crisis Group think-tank says some 2,000 people were killed in 2001 alone, most of them civilians.