Muklis Ali and Dean Yates, Jakarta – Indonesia on Monday gave rebels in Aceh province until December to resume peace talks, backing away from the threat of an intensified military crackdown to crush their decades-old fight for independence.

Speaking after a cabinet meeting on Aceh, chief security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono reiterated that the government's best offer for the province and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) was a special autonomy package unveiled last year.

Political analysts attributed the apparent change of heart to a mix of foreign pressure from the United States and others, and uncertainty over how to solve one of the sprawling country's most intractable separatist, ethnic and religious conflicts.

"If GAM cannot positively accept [the package] ... the government will take stern and swift measures, including increasing the intensity of security operations, to secure the sovereignty and integrity of Indonesia," Yudhoyono said.

"We will give [GAM] time. Hopefully after the Ramadan month of 2002, GAM will announce its stance to continue dialogue with the agenda of accepting special autonomy and stopping the armed conflict," he added. The Muslim fasting month of Ramadan ends in early December.

While giving the deadline and adding that the government was ready for dialogue, Yudhoyono said that the government would stick to a pledge of crippling a rebel group that has been fighting for independence for decades. He did not elaborate.

The government of the world's most populous Muslim nation is already on the offensive in Aceh. Almost daily clashes between rebels and security forces have mocked two years of largely ineffective peace talks.

Some 2,000 people were killed last year alone in the conflict in the resource-rich province on the northern tip of Sumatra island. The last round of peace talks was held in May.

The government had increased its anti-rebel rhetoric in recent weeks, raising expectations that it would announce stepped-up military operations or the imposition of a civil emergency in parts of Aceh worst affected by fighting.

Foreign pressure

Civil emergency is one step down from martial law but still gives wide powers to local authorities. Martial law was an option, although some officials had played down that possibility.

"The government is confused over what to do. There are still many antiquated minds wanting martial law, but they know that ordinary people there do not support that," Maswadi Rauf, a political analyst at the University of Indonesia, said.

Other analysts said the United States and other Western nations had put pressure on Indonesia, already under fire following the acquittal last week of senior police and military officers over violence that ravaged East Timor in 1999 when that territory voted to break away in a UN-sponsored referendum.

"Having sounded out how much they can get away with in terms of going in harder, I think they have realised there are still some limits to that," one senior foreign policy analyst said.

"But one thing to remember is they don't need a formal state of emergency to be a bit more lively on the ground. They can do that anyway if they decide that's what they want to do." Aceh's four million people, caught in the middle of the conflict, have complained of rights abuses by both sides but direct their strongest criticism at the security forces.

One senior US official said last month that a big escalation in military operations in Aceh could affect efforts to restore military ties between Indonesia and the United States, which were cut in 1999 in response to violence in East Timor.

Such ties need US congressional approval, although, in a sign of warming relations, US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who visited Jakarta on August 2, promised Indonesia's security forces $50 million to help them fight terrorism.

In a reminder of how dangerous Aceh can be, a homemade bomb wounded 13 people in the local capital over the weekend as crowds gathered to mark Indonesia's Independence Day.

Indonesia, which sprawls 5,000 km from one end to the other and has 17,000 islands, faces another separatist movement in Papua province on the other side of the country and religious and ethnic violence at several spots in between.

Most analysts agree the government has made progress in cooling most of the conflicts, with Aceh a major exception.