Foreign monitors to start in Aceh

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.