Military demands that GAM no longer carry weapons

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.