Aceh separatists postpone talks with Indonesia

Separatists in the Indonesian province of Aceh say they won't resume peace talks with the central government until police and troops stop intimidating independence supporters.

A spokesman for the Free Aceh Movement, Amni Marzuki, said talks with the government, which were due to go ahead on Thursday in Geneva, would be postponed because the security situation in Aceh wasn't conducive.

A foreign ministry spokesman, Sulaiman Abdulmanan, said the government believed the peace talks would go ahead as planned.

He said that without dialogue, a solution to the crisis in Aceh would slip further out of reach. On Saturday at least fourteen people were killed in clashes with security forces as thousands of independence supporters converged on the provincial capital, Banda Aceh.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service