Jakarta

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.

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.

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.

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 -- 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 -- 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 -- Faced with a huge student protest and a wild outbreak of rioting and arson, President B. J. Habibie said yesterday that he would take "firm action" to curb what he called subversive movements that threaten the country's stability.On the day after soldiers killed at least eight demonstrators and wounded more than 100 others, tens of thousands of students and poor people filled a highway yesterday in front of the parliament building in what seemed to be an unfocused and unguided outpouring of discontent.

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Aileen remains traumatized by the men who broke into her room July 2 and raped and mutilated her. They singled her out, she is convinced, because she is Chinese.Scores of Chinese women report similar experiences in Indonesia this year, victims of a vicious expression of ethnic hatred in a nation with a history of interracial blood feuds.Government ministers acknowledge that such gang rapes have taken place since mobs burned more than 5,000 Chinese stores and shopping malls in mid-May, led by agitators yelling, "Death to the Chinese."

EAST TIMOR, Indonesia -- More than a week after the fall of President Suharto, his picture still hangs in the El Turismo Hotel here -- a reminder of the long, brutal shadow the former Indonesian strongman continues to cast on this wind-swept, tropical island.As Indonesia's new administration releases political prisoners to change its authoritarian image, many here still live in fear of a military occupying force that rules through kidnappings, torture and executions, according to human rights groups and church workers.

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- In a potential sign of greater openness after the fall of President Suharto, Indonesia moved yesterday toward the release of some political prisoners.Officials threw open the iron door of East Jakarta's Cipinang Prison and allowed reporters to freely interview inmates as family members and friends devoured cake and celebrated what they hoped might be a speedy release."This is extraordinary," said Colonel Latief, who has spent the past 32 years behind bars for his role in the slayings of six army generals in 1965 that led to Indonesia's "Year of Living Dangerously" and the rise of Suharto.