Indonesian Police Club Students

President Suharto's new Cabinet took office Monday in a pillared hall as police and student protesters fought briefly on a university campus in the capital.

Only ten miles from the swearing-in ceremony, police clubbed students at the private Universitas Nasional during a rally against the government and its inability to stem inflation and unemployment.

At least 50 students raised a banner that read "Reform or death" and tried to march into the street, but a larger number of anti-riot police and soldiers with sticks and shields pummeled them briefly.

The students retreated and threw stones at the officers. There were no reports of arrests. Last week, armed forces chief Gen. Wiranto, newly appointed as defense minister, warned that authorities would crack down on protesters who break the law.

Several hundred students staged peaceful anti-government rallies Monday at two campuses in Surabaya, 400 miles east of Jakarta.

Last week, students at more than a dozen campuses in several cities held noisy protests against the re-election of Suharto, who was awarded a seventh five-year term by a loyalist assembly.

The 36 ministers of the new cabinet, who include the eldest daughter of the president as well as his old friends and business partners, must now tackle Indonesia's gravest economic crisis since the 1960s.

Heading the agenda are the government's troubled ties with the International Monetary Fund, which suspended aid amid fears that Indonesia is not serious about economic reform. Hubert Neiss, the IMF's chief of Asian affairs, was expected to visit Jakarta on Tuesday.

At the presidential palace, a Muslim clergyman held the Koran over the heads of the ministers as the 76-year-old Suharto swore them in. The only Christian, Labor Minister Theo Sambuaga, placed his hand on a Bible.

Under foreign pressure to reform the economy, Suharto hastily assembled a Cabinet packed with allies that critics say is unlikely to push hard on reform.

The IMF halted aid to the financially battered nation because of fears that Suharto is backsliding on austerity measures he promised to implement. So far, the IMF has handed over 6 percent of a $43 billion rescue package.

Indonesia is supposed to dump monopolies and other trade perks that have enriched the president, his family and associates.

At a news conference, the new trade minister said he believed monopolies can be good for the economy if they function in "the interest of the people."

The minister, Mohamad Hasan, is a confidant and golfing partner of Suharto and headed a plywood monopoly that was dismantled in line with the IMF bailout. He is one of Indonesia's richest men.

The new social affairs minister is Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana, Suharto's eldest daughter. A leader of the ruling Golkar party, she is the most politically active of Suharto's six millionaire children, all of whom have built vast business empires nder his patronage.

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