JAKARTA (Reuters) - Feuding Muslims and Christians agreed at talks on Thursday to halt three years of religious clashes on Indonesia's eastern Sulawesi island, a pact officials want to be a model for solving other conflicts.
``The meeting went smoothly and there was a strong (push) to achieve peace from both sides ... Both parties agreed to mutual forgiveness,'' Din Syamsuddin, a senior Islamic leader from Jakarta and a mediator at the two-day talks, told Reuters.
The peace deal follows four failed attempts to halt brutal violence that has killed more than 1,000 people around the town of Poso in Central Sulawesi province, part of the communal unrest that has haunted Indonesia's outer reaches in recent years.
But the deal did not call for the expulsion of Muslim paramilitaries from the Java-based Laskar Jihad organization, whom Christians have accused of fanning the latest fighting.
The Sulawesi peace drive took place against a backdrop of heightened security across the world's most populous Muslim nation as police try to prevent a repeat of Christmas Eve bombings near churches last year that killed 19 people.
Speaking by phone from the venue of the meeting in the South Sulawesi town of Malino, 1,425 km (890 miles) east of Jakarta, Syamsuddin said Laskar Jihad members were part of the agreement.
``Anybody can live in areas they wish to,'' Syamsuddin said.
WEAPONS TO BE SURRENDERED
SCTV television quoted Chief Social Welfare Minister Jusuf Kalla, who hosted the talks, as saying the government would set up an independent commission to oversee implementation of the pact as well as supervising ``the behavior of any outsiders.''
Details of the pact include a call for the surrender of weapons, the repatriation of tens of thousands of refugees to Poso and a pledge by both sides to respect each others' religion.
National police chief General Da'i Bachtiar said security forces would begin seizing weapons that had not been handed in next month, the official Antara news agency reported.
Justice Minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra said the government wanted the framework of the Poso talks to be a model for ending fighting between Muslims and Christians that has hobbled the neighboring Moluccas islands since 1999.
``The president welcomes the developments in the meeting which have been very conducive and positive in solving the problem in Poso,'' he said after meeting President Megawati Sukarnoputri.
``We are attempting to make the meeting a model for conflict resolution in the Moluccas.''
Gunmen on Wednesday shot dead nine Christians in the violence-torn city of Ambon in the Moluccas.
Officials had said the current talks over Poso stood a better chance of succeeding this time because of the inclusion for the first time of commanders from the warring militia.
POLICE ON HIGH ALERT
Police across Indonesia will be on high alert until the New Year to prevent a repeat of the bombings last Christmas Eve, which political analysts said were aimed at destabilizing the government of then-president Abdurrahman Wahid.
In Jakarta alone, police have 15,000 personnel on standby to safeguard the capital during Christmas and into the New Year although they have yet to begin tightly guarding churches. Christians have accused members of the Laskar Jihad organization of stirring up the Poso conflict.
Hundreds of members of the Muslim group have gone to Poso since July and one of its leaders said on Wednesday hundreds more had been sent in recent weeks. Poso police have said there had been no reports of any new fighters arriving.
Laskar Jihad has also fought Christians in the Moluccas. They have little influence on Java island, despite being based there.
Some of Indonesia's eastern areas have roughly equal numbers of Muslims and Christians. But the vast majority of Indonesia's Muslims are moderate and many parts of the country are free of communal clashes despite some foreign perceptions that the giant archipelago is awash in violence.