President Soeharto's successor plans to stick around longer than many want, reports SETH MYDANS from Jakarta.

President B.J. Habibie, presenting himself as the reformer that Indonesians have been calling for, has laid out an intricate election timetable that would keep him in office until at least the end of next year, despite widespread calls for a quick handover of power.

Alternately effusive, assertive, defensive and a touch melancholy, his eyes flashing and his hands chopping the air, Dr Habibie spoke in his first newspaper interview since becoming President about his hopes to lead Indonesia out of its political and economic crisis.

Just two weeks after his elevation from vice-president after the sudden resignation of his friend and mentor president Soeharto, he still seems amazed to be where he is.

Gesturing across his broad desk and clapping his hands in seeming astonishment, he said: "You know, I was always sitting on that side. The president was always here. Now I am here."

At one point, he had to be reminded by an aide not to refer to Mr Soeharto as president.

"You are the president," the aide said.

Still, Dr Habibie outlined a confident program that challenged both his critics and his former boss.

On Monday, the Attorney-General, Mr Soedjono Atmonegoro, announced an investigation of Mr Soeharto's accumulated riches, but Dr Habibie said he did not favour digging into the sources of his predecessor's billions, and he warned against "wild West" justice.

He defended the Soeharto family's self-enrichment as part of a feudal culture, and described his predecessor as frugal and never a part of the jet set.

Discussing Mr Soeharto's accumulation of billions of dollars, he said: "If you dig into the past, then the past is unlimited, and I have limited resources. I'd better concentrate on the future.

"Many of the things that are said are right and many things are also exaggerated. And so it is not worthwhile for the future of my country to dig into the past."

As for his own wealth and that of his family, Dr Habibie said they were all highly educated and talented people who had earned their riches fairly.

He dismissed opponents who are urging a quick transfer of power, saying "this is not a jungle", and insisted that the only constitutional route to a transition involved a tortuous procedure that would lead to a parliamentary election next year, followed by an electoral assembly at the end of the year that would select a new president.

He refused to rule out his own candidacy for a new term.

Dr Habibie also gave a vivid account of the transition of power on May 21, when he received the news that he would become president only at the last moment and only from a presidential aide.

For 20 years Mr Soeharto's minister of research and technology, Dr Habibie has little administrative experience and little base of power, and had never been seen - even by Mr Soeharto - as a potential president. Most Indonesians view him as a transitional figure, and powerful forces are pressing him to step out of the way.

He spoke with a mixture of deep affection and veiled criticism for Mr Soeharto, whom he has known since childhood and whom he considers one of his best friends, but who now appears to have turned his back on the new president.

He believed that Mr Soeharto, 76, had grown too old to sense the mood of the people. Dr Habibie said that he, at the age of 62, had a better feel for the aspirations of the younger generation.

In contrast with his patron, Dr Habibie presents himself as a champion of democracy and human rights, and of the kind of economic openness that he said he hoped would quickly restore public confidence in the economy and attract foreign investment.

"Now you have another person - you have another president," he said. "You have another economic team. You have transparency. You could never talk to president Soeharto the way you can talk to me."

He added: "I am not the king."

In a melancholy tale of the handover, he described his sudden abandonment by Mr Soeharto, who he said had not communicated with him since stepping down.

The last time they met, he said, between 8 and 9 on the evening before Mr Soeharto resigned on May 21, Mr Soeharto was still discussing his plans to announce a new Cabinet the next morning.

"But then at 11 o'clock I was informed by the secretary of the president that he had changed his mind. He was going to step down the next morning and leave it to the vice-president to take over the leadership of the country.

"The next morning I applied to see him at home but they said, "No, he is on his way. He will not receive you.'"

Dr Habibie said he hurriedly asked various officials whether the handover was constitutional, and was assured that it was. After Mr Soeharto had read his brief resignation statement and Dr Habibie had taken the oath of office, he said,"he looked at me, he shook hands - not a single word, just a smile. That's all."

At that moment, Dr Habibie said, as powerful politicians and military men milled around him and his mentor disappeared in his chauffeured car, he did the only thing left to him to do. He prayed: "God, give me strength."

Dr Habibie said he had embarked on a program that in many ways repudiated both the style and the substance of his predecessor.

"People say, "Habibie is not more or less than the puppet of his former master,'" he said.

"If that is the case, why on my first day do I touch on human rights? Within 25 hours and 30 minutes after I took over, I announced a Cabinet. Two hours later I was negotiating about human rights."

He has begun what officials say will be the release of hundreds of political prisoners. However, he said on Tuesday that there would be no change in policy towards the separatist movement in East Timor.

- The New York Times