Jakarta – More than 40 fighters of an armed separatist group in Indonesia's remote eastern province of Papua have surrendered to police and their immediate fate is – handicrafts training.

Papua police chief Budi Utomo told leading El Shinta radio that most of the 42 members of the Free Papua Organisation (OPM) had been living in the jungle, some as long as 10 years.

The news comes with Indonesia in the middle of a fresh offensive to crush rebels in Aceh province at the other end of the country. "They have come to their senses and surrendered," Utomo said.

The poorly-armed OPM has waged a low-level guerrilla war for independence for decades in Papua and surrenders have been rare. Its leaders are notoriously difficult to contact while there are few accurate estimates of its numbers.

Utomo said most of the 42 had been based in the jungle in three separate districts and grown tired of such a life.

He said authorities would deal leniently with the men and that they would be given handicrafts training. "Based on several interviews and discussions, most of them have been bored living in the woods," Utomo told the radio station.

Most attention now focuses on the Papuan Presidium Council, a political movement of influential community leaders in the predominantly Christian and animist province that seeks independence peacefully from mainly Muslim Indonesia. Leaders of that group were not available to comment.

As in Aceh, Jakarta has ruled out independence for Papua and no country officially supports Papuan separatists. But the West is often critical of Indonesia's heavy-handed approach.

The government on May 19 launched its offensive in Aceh, where rebels have far greater numbers and are better armed than those in Papua.

Indonesia wrested control of Papua, formerly Irian Jaya, from the Dutch in 1963. The United Nations sanctioned the move six years later in a widely discredited vote by hand-picked local representatives. The vote was called an "act of free choice".