Deadlock looms in Aceh peace talks: Widodo

Tiarma Siboro, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The ongoing peace talks between the Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in Finland may end in deadlock with Jakarta refusing the rebels' demand for the establishment of local political parties and self government.

Chief security minister Widodo Adi Sutjipto said on Wednesday that the government may have to declare Aceh in status quo and immediately hold an "internal consolidation" to withdraw from the ongoing fifth round of negotiations, should GAM insist on pressing the demands.

"The government's stance is quite clear. The demand for local political parties cannot be accommodated. It is already firm that we cannot accept it because our existing legal system only recognizes national-scope political parties.

"There are negotiable and non-negotiable items, and our framework is clear ... that the results of the talks should not go against the concept of the unitary state, the 1945 Constitution and our existing regulations," he said at his office.

However, GAM leaders on Wednesday said "amazingly surprising" advances had been made so far in the peace talks.

As a second day of negotiations got under way on Wednesday, delegates said they were pleased that they had already managed to cover all the points in a draft peace treaty, saying they were now prepared to discuss all the suggested changes.

"It's amazingly surprising that we managed to discuss all the issues already yesterday (Tuesday)," GAM spokesman Bakhtiar Abdullah told AFP in Helsinki, Finland. "Now we can discuss the new draft today," he added.

Widodo, a retired four-star Navy admiral and former armed forces chief, chairs the government's supervising team monitoring the peace talks.

He said the government would continue to guarantee the safety of foreigners in tsunami-ravaged Aceh, where they are currently involved in reconstruction work, in the event the current peace talks collapsed.

"I am not pessimistic, but I believe that both parties will make all efforts to avoid the process from suffering a deadlock," Widodo said.

Facilitated by the Finland-based Crisis Management Initiative (CMI), the Helsinki talks are aimed at seeking ways to end the three decades of fighting in Aceh, in which at least 15,000 people have been killed since 1976.

The July talks could be the final round of informal meetings between the government and GAM, and a final memorandum of understanding (MOU), expected to be the basis of a possible peace accord, could be outlined in August.

The MOU contains several crucial points, including security arrangements, economic development, amnesties and integration processes for former rebels and Acehnese political representation.

A dispute over Aceh's political representation continued during the negotiations, with GAM insisting that the government should allow Acehnese to establish local political parties as a fundamental basis for the demanded system of self-government.

Self-rule was a key condition set by the rebels as they dropped their long-held demand for an independent Aceh, instead allowing the resource-rich province at the northern tip of Sumatra to remain as an integral part of Indonesia.

Bakhtiar Abdullah said the Indonesian government must show that it sincerely wants peace by accepting the demand for self- government in Aceh based on elections contested by local political parties. "If Indonesia wants to be considered a democratic country, it must accept internationally recognized standards of democracy."

The other major hurdle -- the demilitarization of Aceh -- has been largely overcome after a tentative agreement was reached to sharply reduce the massive Indonesian contingent there in exchange for disarmament of guerrilla forces.

The demilitarization process would be overseen by several hundred observers from the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

The Indonesian Military (TNI) has officially assigned Maj. Gen. Bambang Darmono, who was the Aceh military operations commander when Jakarta launched an offensive operation to crush GAM members in 2003, to join the ongoing talks with the task of monitoring all security arrangements discussed in the dialog.