Foreign monitors to start in Aceh
Tiarma Siboro, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
As soon as the Aceh peace agreement is signed on Monday, 50 overseas monitors will start working out of posts in four designated areas of the province.
The advance team from the Aceh Monitoring Mission (AMM), who hail from European Union and ASEAN countries, will set up their posts in the provincial capital of Banda Aceh, and in Meulaboh, Lhokseumawe and Bireuen.
When all the overseas monitors, numbering around 200, have arrived in Aceh, the establishment of the remaining six posts will follow. The monitors will observe the implementation of the peace deal between the Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) for one year at the maximum.
Minister of Information and Communications Sofyan Djalil said the advance team would monitor the preparations made by Indonesian Military and police personnel, and the guerrillas, before and after all points of the peace pact, which includes security arrangements, came into effect.
"Beginning in September, the team will monitor the withdrawal of the non-local military units from Aceh. Simultaneously, they will also observe GAM's surrender and destruction of their weapons," Sofyan said after a ministerial meeting on political, legal and security affairs on Wednesday.
National Police chief Gen. Sutanto said that the overseas observers would be protected by the local police, who would also guard their monitoring posts.
"We will assign police personnel either from Jakarta or those who are already posted in Banda Aceh. Officers who speak English fluently will be assigned to protect the team members," said Sutanto, who also attended the meeting.
He would not disclose the number of police officers involved, but said that "they will be sufficient in number to guard the peace process."
A major pullout of reinforcement police personnel will also follow the peace agreement, Sutanto said.
"In a show of our support for the peace deal in Aceh, we have prepared a withdrawal plan for personnel that will begin immediately. Locally recruited units will, however, stay in Aceh," he said.
The National Police deployed around 14,000 members of its paramilitary Mobile Brigade (Brimob) force to Aceh after President Megawati Soekarnoputri declared martial law in Aceh on May 19, 2003.
The additional police troopers joined around 38,000 military troops to participate in a major offensive against an estimated 8,000 GAM fighters.
The meeting on Wednesday also resulted in a decision to declare amnesties for GAM prisoners beginning in late August.
Aceh's Justice and Human Rights Agency is now collecting data on the number of GAM members currently serving jail terms in 20 prisons in Aceh. Latest figures show that there are currently 1,437 detainees across the province, 1,248 of whom have been convicted, while the remaining 189 others are on remand.
The government will also propose a review of the special autonomy law for Aceh in a bid to accommodate GAM's demand for a local political party.