Military demands that GAM no longer carry weapons
Tiarma Siboro and Zakki P. Hakim, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The Indonesian Military (TNI) has called on the Aceh foreign peace monitoring team to take anticipatory measures to prevent the current peace process between the government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) from faltering, including banning former rebels from bearing weapons in public.
TNI chief Gen. Endriartono Sutarto said on Monday that the Aceh Monitoring Mission (AMM) should be responsible for ensuring that there were no GAM weapons being used until after they were all surrendered, as was agreed in the recently signed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between GAM and the government.
"The AMM also must clearly detail the implementation of all items in the MOU to avoid confrontations in the field, particularly on the use and carrying of weapons by GAM members," he said at TNI headquarters in Cilangkap.
Endriartono was responding to the first confirmed exchange of fire involving members of GAM and TNI on Sunday in the hills near a village in Indrapuri district, Aceh Besar.
"Some incidents that have taken place since the signing of the MOU were triggered by misunderstandings on the part of GAM members who are opposed to the policies of their leaders to end the conflict," he said.
Endriartono said GAM members should no longer be allowed to carry weapons unless they were taking them in for collection at TNI or police posts, or to the local administration.
He added that the TNI would be taking defensive rather than offensive postures during the disarmament period, but quickly added that retaliating to attacks by rebels remained a likely option to minimize casualties.
The MOU rules that GAM will demobilize its 3,000 guerrillas and decommission of all kinds of armament in four stages, starting from Sept. 15 through Dec. 31 with the assistance of AMM.
"It needs to be emphasized that there should no longer be any weapons in the community after the whole decommissioning process ends. Besides surrendering 840 standard arms, GAM must also surrender all hand-made arms that they have also used," Endriartono said.
Meanwhile, State Minister of Communications and Information Sofyan Djalil said Sunday's incident was still within the bounds of toleration, especially after almost 30 years of armed conflict in Aceh.
"It's understandable ... there's no way that this MOU can work out in just one night. The MOU is only 15 days old. Besides, the incident wasn't significant because they were firing upward and there were no casualties," he said on the sidelines of the sixth Asian-European Editors Forum here.
However, Sofyan added, the government and GAM had agreed to try to reduce tensions between themselves, especially after the signing of the MOU and during the transition period.
"So that all the small snags are eliminated and the big ones are reduced in order to create a conducive situation in the field," he said, adding that AMM was not yet in full swing in carrying out its task in monitoring the situation and the implementation of the peace deal.