Wahid Rejects Idea of U.N. Intervention

Faced with international pressure to bring in peacekeepers, President Abdurrahman Wahid said Indonesia can end the fighting in the Molucca Islands by itself. Violence between Christians and Muslims in the Moluccas left one policeman dead Sunday, and thousands of people fled their homes in the north Sumatran separatist province of Aceh out of fear of escalating violence there, officials said. Wahid told a political rally that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned him recently that the Security Council was under pressure to deploy peacekeepers to the Moluccas.