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esponding to the convoluted problems plaguing the country’s easternmost region, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said on Wednesday that his ministers should visit Papua and West Papua to observe conditions in the provinces firsthand.

Speaking before a limited Cabinet meeting to discuss Papua at the presidential office on Wednesday, Yudhoyono ordered his ministers to regularly visit Papua and West Papua.

“It will be different if you only receive reports and discuss it in Jakarta. Go there and talk with local leaders, patrons and religious leaders to help find the best solutions,” Yudhoyono told his aides.

“We need to make acceleration of development in Papua and West Papua a national priority, not just business as usual.”

The President, however, stopped short of commenting on alleged human rights abuses in the region or the “meal money” paid by PT Freeport Indonesia, the Indonesian subsidiary of US mining giant Freeport-McMoran, to police officers guarding the company’s local operations.

The National Commission for Human Rights (Komnas HAM) and human rights activists have criticized the payments, which topped $US14 million in 2010, saying that they might affect the police’s impartiality and lead to the use of excessive force against civilians.

On Freeport, Yudhoyono said that the government had “ the obligation to facilitate and mediate between the workers and the company to help find an immediate solution for the ongoing labor disputes.”

Dozens of violent incidents have taken place in Papua recently, most of which stemmed from labor actions led by Freeport workers, who have been on strike for higher wages for the last two months.

At least six civilians and a police officer were killed in the region in the past two weeks, putting Yudhoyono’s administration under international scrutiny. In the last incident, a police officer was shot in the face by unknown assailants on Monday. It was the fifth shooting in Papua in the past four weeks.

Komnas HAM reported that it found indications that the police and the Indonesian Military (TNI)might have committed human rights abuses, particularly when they used force to disperse the third Papuan People’s Congress in Jayapura in October, leading to the deaths of three Papuans.

Coordinating Legal, Political and Security Affairs Minister Djoko Suyanto, however, down played the commission’s findings, saying Komnas HAM did not investigate when police and TNI members were killed in Papua.

At the meeting, the head of the newly formed Unit for the Acceleration of Development in Papua and West Papua (UP4B), Lt. Gen. (ret.) Bambang Darmono, presented the unit’s work plan, according to presidential spokesman Julian Aldrin Pasha.

“UP4B must play a real and significant role to assure synergy between the central and regional governments as well as to make sure that development programs and budget disbursements to the region are implemented well,” Yudhoyono said.

Presidential special staff expert for regional autonomy Velix Wanggai said that the unit’s main task was to eliminate bottlenecks between the central government and local administrations in Papua and “initiate breakthroughs” to solve socioeconomic and political problems in the region.