Global Pause & Scene Switch mid-animation

In need of some help. Fairly green at Flash 8.

I have swf project that has navigation buttons between scenes. When first built (without animation contained within each scene) the buttons switched between scenes no problem.

Now, they are loaded with animation and mp3 elements along the timeline and once one scene is playing (some are 2 minutes long), the other buttons will not activate (i.e gotoAndPlay(“Scene X”, 1)) until the entire animation plays through in the current scene. I have tried many forms of stop(); at different points within the Actionscript onPress and onRelease commands of each navigation button, but no luck.

Essentially, I want the user to be able to start a scene but interupt it mid-way and start the next scene if they wish, and so on throughout the swf.

Additionally, I am trying to add a global pause button (stop) that retains current playhead position so that when a play button is activated, it starts up where it had stopped - no matter what scene they are in. All efforts have failed as I can’t seem to interupt the current scene playing until it completes.

Thanks for your help in advance.

Cheers,