Jakarta

THE Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit this weekend in New Zealand must press Indonesia to allow peacekeepers into East Timor and to keep its pledge to respect the territory's referendum for independence.No one is proposing that an uninvited force would fight Indonesia. What APEC members do threaten is a withdrawal of world efforts to lend and invest the world's fourth-largest nation out of its recession. That is a formidable coercion.But in refusing, Indonesia -- or its army calling the shots -- has a powerful defense: its own fragility.

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- He is 59 years old and nearly blind. He speaks passable English, comes from a long line of Muslim clerics and has studied in Egypt, Iraq and Canada.He totters about with a cane, tirelessly preaches religious tolerance and heads the largest Muslim group in the world's most populous Muslim nation.These are some of the spare and more obvious facts about Abdurrahman Wahid, Indonesia's newly elected president.His policies and political vision are less known, as are any political alliances he might have struck to help win the presidency.

WASHINGTON -- Stepping up the pressure on Indonesia, President Clinton and other world leaders yesterday called on Jakarta to reverse itself and immediately invite United Nations peacekeeping forces to stop the mayhem engulfing East Timor.President Clinton described the situation as "deteriorating" and said it had become clear that the Indonesian army was helping the militias that have been murdering pro-independence East Timorese and U.N. workers.U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan also called on Jakarta to ask for the peacekeepers.

IT WAS one of the world's great testimonies to democracy, an election demanding change in which practically everyone eligible voted. A revolution by ballot. On Monday, Indonesia enjoyed the second free election in its history. The first was in 1955.Counting 113 million paper ballots may take weeks. Not everyone will believe the announced result. But the main message is in. In this orderly and nonviolent election, the Indonesian people repudiated the heritage of 32 years of dictatorship by Suharto and called for fundamental change.

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- While calm returned to Indonesia's capital yesterday after riots against the military left at least six people dead, students took to the streets of another large Indonesian city, hurling burning tires and rocks at soldiers and the police to protest a proposed law that would grant the army sweeping new powers.There were no immediate reports of injuries as a result of the riots yesterday in Medan, a city of 1.2 million on the island of Sumatra. But Indonesian news agencies reported fierce street clashes between nearly 2,000 student demonstrators and a joint force of soldiers and the police.

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- For Akwet Lim, 54, a sign painter in Glodok, Jakarta's Chinatown, Chinese New Year means a visit to the temple, with its smoky, sweet incense and burning red candles. This year, his prayer was simple."I want peace," he says. "I am afraid."Last May, he had to flee from his shop and hide in an army barracks with his wife and three children during three days of mob violence that left an estimated 1,200 people dead, dozens of Chinese women raped and thousands of buildings damaged.

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Over the past few months, simmering tensions have exploded into horrifying and bewildering violence in a string of Indonesian provinces, threatening the national elections next month as well as the stability of Indonesia itself.In West Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo, a local photographer took pictures of dismembered bodies with their hearts cut out, and CNN videotaped boys playing soccer with a severed head. In Ambon, Christians and Muslims who had lived peacefully together for years have killed each other with spears and machetes and burned churches, mosques, homes and villages.

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Soldiers and riot police stormed onto the grounds of Indonesia's parliamentary complex last night and forced 2,000 students to peacefully leave the national political symbol they had held this week as part of their successful quest to topple President Suharto.Waving flags and pumping their fists from atop public buses, the students retreated through the darkened streets of the capital before dawn in what seemed like a victory lap after helping end the reign of Asia's longest-serving leader.

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Just a few days ago this nation of more than 200 million was bracing for the worst: mass bloodshed in the capital and perhaps civil war.Expatriates who had not already fled Jakarta poured into the airport desperate to escape. Hotels warned guests, some of whom had left their homes because of earlier violence, to draw their curtains and stay away from the windows.Opponents of then-President Suharto planned a demonstration of up to 1 million people on Wednesday, just days after rioting had left more than 500 dead.

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- For the third time in six months, Indonesia reached a new bailout deal with the International Monetary Fund yesterday, this time pledging to meet "to the letter" all commitments to reform its crisis-ridden economy.Disappointed by Indonesia's promises twice before, the IMF plans to monitor progress closely in the world's fourth most populous nation.Yesterday's compromise package came after three weeks of heavy bargaining. Indonesia showed new willingness to disband monopolies, while international lenders will allow Indonesia to cling to some subsidies to head off potential social unrest over rising prices.

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Indonesians yesterday that she wants to open a "robust partnership" with their fast-growing country, President Barack Obama's boyhood home. Arriving here on the second stop of her first trip as the top American diplomat, Clinton also announced that the Obama administration intends to sign a treaty moving the U.S. closer to a key regional group, the Association of South East Asian Nations. The Bush administration declined to sign the treaty, a move that critics took as a sign of its lack of interest in the region and preoccupation with the Middle East.

There was little reason to pay a visit to Barack Obama's primary school in a shady Jakarta neighborhood. But a stop at the Basuki School, built in the Menteng district by the Dutch in 1932, had been scheduled during a journalism fellowship last May sponsored by the East-West Center. The visit was optional, but no one declined the opportunity. As long as we were in the area, we reporters ostensibly wanted to check allegations that Obama had attended a madrassa. In reality, we were curious about a chapter his life and origins.

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Abu Bakar Bashir, the militant cleric alleged to be one of Southeast Asia's top terrorist leaders, was freed from prison yesterday after serving 25 months for his role in the bombings of two Bali nightclubs in 2002. Bashir, 67, smiled and waved to more than 100 supporters who had gathered outside Jakarta's Cipinang Prison to witness his release. "God is great," the crowd shouted as he stepped out of the prison gates. Bashir, who has denied any role in terrorist activities, signaled that he would use his freedom to promote the adoption of strict Islamic law in Indonesia, which has the world's largest Muslim population but is among the most moderate Muslim nations.

Indonesia is an affront to the forces of extreme Islam. Its archipelago is home to more Muslims than any other nation. It is a flourishing democracy, with its first directly elected president having taken office just last year. And its government has taken a stand against violent Islamic fundamentalists, hunting down leaders of the regional version of al-Qaida, Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), and disrupting much of that terrorist organization. In 2002, when 202 people, including many foreign vacationers, were killed by terrorist bombs on Indonesia's island of Bali, the attack was widely viewed in part as retribution for Australia's backing of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

JAKARTA, Indonesia - An airline pilot will be tried in the killing of a prominent Indonesian human rights activist who died of arsenic poisoning while on a flight to Amsterdam, a five-judge panel ruled yesterday. Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, an off-duty pilot with Garuda Indonesia, is accused of putting poison into Munir Said Thalib's orange juice while the 38-year-old activist was flying from Jakarta to Singapore a year ago on the first leg of a journey to the Netherlands. Munir was a vocal critic of the Indonesian military and its record of human rights abuses.

DEPUTY DEFENSE Secretary Paul Wolfowitz paid a call on Jakarta over the weekend, and in his wake, U.S. and Indonesian defense officials talked of rising prospects for renewal of military cooperation, limited for more than a decade because of murders and other abuses by Indonesian forces in now independent East Timor. Not so fast. It's hard to disagree with the argument that access to U.S. training would serve as a civilizing influence on the Indonesian army. But that sizable carrot - along with other military aid or sales - ought to be held out only once it's clear that Jakarta will sufficiently rein in its military in the tsunami-battered province of Aceh to allow badly needed foreign relief efforts to proceed effectively.

LHOKSEUMAWE, Indonesia -- Mulyana, a 24-year-old housewife, had just sat down to a wedding party Sunday morning when the tsunami struck. She ran and held onto a coconut tree. Still, the water dragged her far out to sea. "I was alone in the middle of the ocean," Mulyana said yesterday from her hospital bed in this town on the northeastern coast of Aceh province, the area of Indonesia hit hardest by the disaster. "I was afraid of being pulled all the way to India." Mulyana, who cannot swim, said she clung to a coconut tree floating nearby.

JAKARTA, Indonesia - As the death toll in yesterday's bombing of the Australian Embassy climbed to nine, police intensified their hunt for the man they believe is the master bomb-builder behind the attack: a Malaysian mathematician named Dr. Azahari bin Husin. Police said the car bomb, which injured more than 170 people, was the work of the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist network and its explosives expert, Azahari, who allegedly constructed bombs used in the group's earlier attacks in Bali and Jakarta.

One month and 24 days after he suffered a stroke in Indonesia, Dennis Storm, 57, a decorated Marine veteran and Bel Air resident, returned to the United States on Thursday. Storm was working as a contractor for a Singapore-based company and living in Jakarta when he was admitted to the Siloam Gleneagles Lippo Cikarang hospital for a stroke on Sept. 2. While receiving care, he contracted a fungal infection, pneumonia and bed sores. His family had been working with the U.S. Embassy and other government, military and private organizations to bring him home since September.

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- The Jemaah Islamiyah extremist network, accused of bombing nightclubs in Bali and the Marriott hotel in Jakarta, is suspected of planning attacks on U.S. oil companies and other targets in the Indonesian capital. A confidential document reviewed by The Los Angeles Times indicated that among the targets on the group's list are the Jakarta headquarters of Halliburton, a company once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney; Exxon-Mobil; and Unocal. Indonesian police officials warned seven U.S. companies last month that their names were on a list of potential targets uncovered during a raid on the house of suspected Jemaah Islamiyah members in the central Java city of Semarang.