JP/1/FERY

ICRC suspends mediation role for release of GAM hostages

Tiarma Siboro and Muninggar Sri Saraswati The Jakarta Post Jakarta

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Wednesday it had put on ice its role in attempting to mediate the release of civilians being held hostage by Free Aceh Movement separatists.

The move by the ICRC opens the door to the Indonesian Military to use force to try to free the hostages.

The ICRC said it would resume its mediation role only after the TNI and GAM reached an agreement on the release of the hostages.

"The Indonesian Red Cross and the ICRC have suspended their involvement until both sides to the conflict arrive at an agreement," ICRC spokeswoman Fortuna Alvariza said.

She said the ICRC was not actually directly involved in the negotiations but was acting only as a facilitator.

"Our job was to facilitate the exchange of messages, but we have seen that neither side was willing to find some common ground," Alvariza said.

The government and GAM are now blaming each other for the ICRC's move.

Lt. Gen. Sudi Silalahi, the secretary to Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said the negotiations had been temporarily halted after GAM guerrillas in the field had failed to follow their commanders' orders in Stockholm to free the civilians.

"We (the government) had initially negotiated with someone called Mansor to discuss the releases. At first, the negotiations went quite well.

"But in the middle of the negotiations, GAM replaced Mansor with Ishak Daud who later rejected the order of his leaders to free the hostages," said Sudi, who also chairs the government team trying to arrange the hostage's release.

He was referring to Teungku Mansor, GAM spokesman in East Aceh, and Teungku Ishak Daud, the GAM commander in Peurelak, East Aceh.

However, Ishak recently said the ICRC had offered him an unacceptable proposal to release only three of the hostages -- RCTI cameraman Fery Santoro and the Air Force officers' wives, Cut Soraja and Cut Farida.

The ICRC also proposed that GAM accept a two-day cease-fire in only one subdistrict, despite GAM's demand that government troops be withdrawn from Puereulak regency for the duration of the cease-fire.

"It was a one-sided arrangement. The ICRC told us that it would withdraw from its facilitating role if I rejected the conditions," Ishak told The Jakarta Post by phone.

Sudi said the government could not accept GAM's demand for a two-day cease-fire in all parts of Aceh, particularly in East Aceh, and for the military to withdraw its soldiers from those areas.

Around 100 civilian hostages are being held by GAM, including Fery and the two Air Force officers' wives.

Late last month, RCTI reporter Sory Ersa Siregar was shot dead in what TNI described as a crossfire between its troops and the separatists who had held him for more than six months.