Each truck is worth a cool $2 million, while the rock they carry is worth a lot more.

Set in the shadow of Southeast Asia's highest peak, PT Freeport, Indonesia's strange copper and gold mine, has defied the sceptics to become one of Indonesia's most profitable businesses. A political football, too.

The mine produces gold and copper concentrate. After smelting, the refined metal is worth an estimated $2 billion a year. The 1999 revenues of the mine operator's parent, New Orleans-based Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc, are forecast at $1.6 billion.

Freeport's hospital daily treats cases of deadly diseases like cerebral malaria. Crushed waste rock from its vast operations has denuded huge tracts of forest to the south.

And it is likely to be operating for decades to come.

Shovelling stone

"Mining is basically the same everywhere. You are trying to move rock and you are trying to reduce the costs associated with this," says Gatut Adisoma, Grasberg mine manager.

But the problems of moving rock at Freeport are special. It started as an explorer's footnote on the New Guinea jungle and has defied countless predictions of failure.

To get to the mine you take two tunnels, a cripplingly steep road, a cable car and then drive some more. Drivers need a special licence because of the dangerous nature of the roads.

The thin air makes breathing hard and the fog that rolls in by mid-morning usually covers the mine by afternoon.

The Grasberg open-cast mine, at an elevation of just over 4,000 metres above sea level, will be two kilometres across by the end of its working life. That should be around 2015, but there will still be plenty more ore in the area after that.

Crushed, chemically concentrated ore is piped 110 km to the coast, where it is shipped to smelters, who produce the copper and gold metal and a small amount of silver.

Copper town

Tembagapura or "copper town" bears the Freeport company logo on its town sign. Located half-way up the mountain, it has air conditioned supermarkets and modern apartments for company workers, many expatriates or from elsewhere in Indonesia.

Down on the plain is its ugly sister. The smell of money has attracted traders, prostitutes and would-be mine workers to Timika from across Irian Jaya and elsewhere in Indonesia. Jakarta's police and military maintain a strong presence. The rebel Free Papua Movement is known to have support in the area.

The military also guards many Freeport installations. The government has a 9 per cent stake in the mine, which is regarded as a national asset.

Stone age to modernity

Opponents say Freeport employs too few Irianese. Freeport officials agree, but say local education standards are often too low. Until a few decades ago, most Irianese were still living in the stone age and some still are.

Some 5,000 Irianese are on Freeport company scholarships, some at university level, and the company hopes that some of those will go back to work at the mine.

Vice-president August Kafiar, who is Irianese, says that in the long run it is in Freeport's interest to employ more locals.

"Because Freeport is operating in Irian Jaya and the mine is in Irian Jaya, and Freeport has made a lot of money, it is important for Freeport to look after the people in Irian Jaya," said Kafiar. "We will spend less money. The goal is to make these people understand about business."

It also contributes 1 per cent of gross revenues - that means $16.5 million in 1999 - to a fund to help people from seven local ethnic groups. Many Irianese say this is too little.

But Freeport is a business venture. Company officials quietly grumble that it is not there to do what the government should do.

(Agencies via Xinhua)