Sian Powell – Indonesian Vice-President Jusuf Kalla, although regarded as one of Indonesia's most effective peacemakers, says he will never allow foreign nations to interfere in peace negotiations for the warring province of Aceh.
Quashing hopes that internationally arbitrated peace talks would resume under the new Indonesian Government, Mr Kalla told The Australian foreign intervention was off the drawing board. "We don't want it to be internationalised again," Mr Kalla said. "For the negotiations, it won't be through other countries."
The seemingly intractable problem of Aceh will be a brutal test for Indonesia's new administration. The international community will be watching and waiting for some progress towards peace in the blood-soaked province in the far west of Indonesia.
The Government is scheduled to review policy on Aceh in the next few weeks, but a cabinet meeting chaired by Mr Kalla last Friday decided to extend its state of emergency.
About 2300 suspected rebels and civilians have been killed in Aceh since Jakarta launched a military crackdown to crush the separatists in May last year, following the collapse of peace talks in Tokyo. The oil and gas-rich province is now operating under civil emergency status, yet thousands of Indonesian troops remain stationed there.
Indonesia's armed forces, notorious for human rights abuses across the board, have been accused of assaults, rapes and ex-judicial killings. The rebels of the Free Aceh Movement have, in turn, been blamed for many atrocities.
"The soldiers are there to guard security, while the status is civil emergency," Mr Kalla said. "Earlier, during the military emergency, the troops were there. Later, if the situation becomes less of an emergency, the troops will be withdrawn, step by step."
In a wide-ranging interview, the first given to a newspaper published outside Indonesia, the Vice-President blamed the recent escalation of violence in Poso, another conflict area, on criminals.
The multi-millionaire businessman – he officially reported his wealth at more than $US 15million – is a devout Muslim from the eastern island of Sulawesi. He brokered the Malino accords which helped calm Muslim-Christian warfare in Ambon and Poso, which had led to the deaths of thousands of Indonesians in a few years.
Resurgent violence in Poso – where on Saturday a bomb on a minibus heading for a Christian village exploded, killing three; a fortnight ago a Christian village chief was beheaded; and a week ago a Christian bus driver was shot dead – is the work of a small gang of armed terrorists, Mr Kalla said, rather than genuine inter-religious warfare. "What happened before in Poso and Ambon was a sectarian conflict between Christian and Islamic groups," he said. "Now there's nothing like that in those two areas."
About 87 per cent of Indonesia's population of 230 million is Muslim, with minorities of Hindus, Christians, Buddhists and animists. Yet despite Mr Kalla's success in helping end three years of Muslim-Christian war in Ambon, Christians from eastern Indonesia largely voted for former president Megawati Sukarnoputri in the nation's first direct presidential elections, fearing a Muslim bias from Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
The Vice-President flatly denied there would be any anti-Christian discrimination from the new administration, saying Indonesia was one of the most tolerant nations in the world. Yet a recently released survey conducted by various organisations found almost half of respondents would strongly object to a church being built in an Islamic neighbourhood.
A promoter of peace between religions, Mr Kalla insisted there was nothing to worry about. "Indeed there were earlier fears about shariah Islam (the strict Islamic legal code), but they have no basis because the Indonesian constitution is clear that every person has the same rights," he said.
Yet the Vice-President, like Dr Yudhoyono, said there were no plans to proscribe the militant Islamic terrorist network Jemaah Islamiah, responsible for a string of bombings across Indonesia, including attacks on churches and the 2002 Bali blasts.
"Jemaah Islamiah was never legal," he said. "No one knows who JI is. No one knows its place, its office, it's never been known. How are we to say it's legal or illegal?"
Mr Kalla was equally dismissive of the threats posed by the few Islamic boarding schools linked to JI, such as the Ngruki school in Solo, founded by extremist preacher Abu Bakar Bashir, on trial for terrorism.
Dozens of accused and convicted JI operatives went to the school, or were connected with it in some way, including some key Bali bombers. The school, Mr Kalla said, was not to blame.
"Many of those who bombed the World Trade Centre were educated in German technical schools. Does that mean those technical schools must be shut down? Of course not," he said.
The Vice-President recently further inflamed the anxiety of some non-Muslims by repeatedly referring to the huge gap between Indonesia's rich conglomerates, largely owned by non-Muslim Indonesians of Chinese descent, and the nation's small and medium-sized enterprises.
Mr Kalla has talked of financial aid for the small firms, and Chinese entrepreneurs fear discrimination is just around the corner. They remember the riots of 1998, when Chinese businesses were torched, and Chinese Indonesians assaulted, raped and killed.
Yet according to Mr Kalla, the idea to support the smaller businesses is simply a pragmatic decision, to ward off ill-feeling rather than create it.
"The Indonesian experience is that if we don't support this, there will be injustice, inequity," he said. "If there is inequity, there could be a clash. That has been our experience for many years."
The new administration led by Dr Yudhoyono and Mr Kalla has enormous tasks ahead of it: dealing with entrenched corruption and a shaky judiciary, and chipping away at massive unemployment and poverty. To further complicate matters, the nation's federal parliamentarians have been locked in a bitter dispute between the winners and the losers, refusing to get on with matters of government and wrangling over who will get important commission chairs.
"That's actually the dynamic of a democracy that isn't quite ready, but it's a necessary lesson," Mr Kalla said. "It's also the psychology of the election results. There are those who lost. Certainly those who lost are still emotional, but I think those levels of emotion will lessen."
Relations with Australia are one of the few bright spots for the new administration. John Howard would be received with a "happy heart" if he wanted to formally visit Indonesia in the near future, Mr Kalla said, signalling that once-rocky relations between the two nations were likely to remain smooth.
Mr Howard, who has visited Indonesia 10 times as Prime Minister, flew to Jakarta last month for a 24-hour visit to attend the inauguration of the President and Vice-President. The diplomatic move was well-received in Jakarta, where xenophobic suspicions have been slow to ebb since Australia led the intervention in East Timor in 1999.
"Nations are like families; there are problems today that tomorrow are fine," Mr Kalla said. "But the problems of yesterday were only the problems of East Timor. And East Timor has already finished. I think our relations have returned to normal."
He also believes Australia has every right to protect itself with weapons which could potentially threaten Indonesia. "Long-range missiles; I think it's the right of any government to have weapons to guard security," Mr Kalla said.
"And certainly, we're sure they won't be aimed at Indonesia. Relations with Indonesia must be good relations, and the Australian Government in turn doesn't need to worry that Indonesian methods or policies will ever disrupt the existence of Australia."