Nor can Indonesia's economic malaise be blamed, since the Moluccas have been relatively unaffected by Asia's financial turmoil.

ECONOMIST: Indonesia

Several thousand arrived in the Moluccas after sailing from the main Indonesian island of Java, over 2, 000km (1, 240 miles) away.

ECONOMIST: Indonesia��s unholy war

Like many parts of Indonesia, the Moluccas suffer from the vacuum of power created when ex-President Suharto stepped aside two years ago.

ECONOMIST: Indonesia��s unholy war

The violence that has gripped Indonesia has already led to the killing of more than 1, 500 people in the Moluccas in the past year.

ECONOMIST: Brutality and budgets in Indonesia

Among the many reasons for the killings in the Moluccas, say observers, is an influx of new migrants, setting off land disputes and tilting a delicate ethnic and religious balance.

ECONOMIST: Indonesia��s unholy war

The Christians and Muslims who have been killing each other in Ambon and the rest of the Moluccas have caught the world's headlines, but the trouble may reach wider than that.

ECONOMIST: A Survey of Indonesia

They include the millions of Indonesians who have been horrified by the rampant separatist and communal violence which has broken out across the vast archipelago, and which this week saw religious killings jump from the Moluccas to the tourist island of Lombok.

ECONOMIST: Brutality and budgets in Indonesia

Separatist movements exist in Madura, Kalimantan and the Moluccas, though they are puny in comparison with the two best organised, in Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra, and, at the other extremity, in West Papua (formerly called Irian Jaya, and before that West New Guinea) some 4, 000km (2, 500 miles) away to the east.

ECONOMIST: After East Timor's independence