Foreign help sought to pressure GAM
Fabiola Desy Unidjaja and Tiarma Siboro, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono met on Monday with six foreign ambassadors and asked if they could help pressure the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) leaders living overseas not to interfere with the ongoing humanitarian relief efforts in Aceh.
In the snap meeting, the President said that the Indonesian government wanted to find a peaceful solution to the ongoing Aceh war.
"We emphasized that the separatist issue is our domestic affair, but especially the GAM leaders in Sweden, we asked for the Swedish government to do something against their citizens that lead the rebellion movement here in Indonesia," said State Secretary Yusril Ihza Mahendra, paraphrasing the President after the meeting.
The six ambassadors were from the United States, B. Lynn Pascoe; Japan, Yutaka Iimura; Singapore Edward Lee; Sweden, Lennart Linner; the United Kingdom, Charles Humfrey and Libya's Charge d'Affaires Ali Mabrouk al-Sheriqy.
The ambassadors refused to comment to the local reporters after the meeting.
Susilo's appeal came after the Indonesian military earlier accused GAM separatist rebels of trying to disrupt the humanitarian relief work in Aceh, despite a tentative cease-fire called by each side. The latest in a series of recent flare-ups occurred on Sunday near the main United Nations compound in Banda Aceh.
The gunfire created concerns over the safety of hundreds of foreign and local humanitarian workers in the province, who are assisting hundreds of thousands of tsunami survivors.
Susilo responded by stating that the government would ensure the safety of all humanitarian workers in Aceh, and the government would push GAM not to interfere with the ongoing humanitarian operation in the province.
GAM rebels have been fighting for independence since 1976. The government launched a massive military operation against the rebels in May 2003 after the failure of peace talks in Tokyo, putting the oil- and gas-rich province under martial law.
The government has also been trying for several years to get the Swedish government to take legal action against GAM's top leaders, several of whom now hold Swedish citizenship.
Three of the key GAM leaders, Hasan Tiro, Malik Mahmood and Abdullah Zaini live in Stockholm and have been questioned several times by the local attorney general's office after Indonesia sent several files believed to implicate the three in crimes. The cases were apparently not deemed strong enough and no further legal action has been taken.
Malik Mahmood is believed to be a Singaporean citizen, while the other two are Swedish.
Yusril said that the U.S., UK and Japanese ambassadors were asked to attend the meeting as they had previously been involved in peace negotiations, while Libya had offered to assist Indonesia in ending the separatist problem in the province.
Meanwhile in Aceh, GAM Commander-in-Chief Muzakkir Manaf said that his troops would stick to their commitment to a cease-fire and hoped everyone would work together -- military troops, civilians, volunteers and journalists - in Aceh to focus on humanitarian relief.
"We have been in a defensive position since we unilaterally proposed a cease-fire. However, we may review our stance if the Indonesian Military (TNI) continues to blame us for every security disturbance that has taken place, despite the disaster," Muzakkir said in the statement made available to The Jakarta Post.
Muzakkir's statement came amid conflicting accounts on who was responsible for Sunday's shooting.
Meanwhile, Coordinating Minister of People's Welfare Alwi Shihab, who is heading the country's relief efforts, was quoted by AP as saying that the burst of gunfire came from a "troubled" Indonesian soldier, not a rebel gunman.