RI, GAM ready to resume talks, focus on autonomy
Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
The government is ready to resume peace talks with Free Aceh Movement (GAM) rebel leaders after they agreed negotiations should focus on the government's offer for special autonomy, a senior minister says.
However, a GAM leader said while the separatists were prepared to start the dialog by discussing the autonomy offer, they had already rejected it.
Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Widodo Adi Sucipto said a high-level delegation would fly to Finland's capital of Helsinki on Saturday and start talks on Monday.
The government said it expects progress from the second round of peace talks, which will be facilitated by the Crisis Management Initiative (CMI), a global mediator headed by former president of Finland Martti Ahtisaari.
"We have received confirmation (from the CMI) that the talks will revolve around the special autonomy. We do hope for concrete progress," Widodo said on Friday after a limited Cabinet meeting at the Presidential Office.
Widodo reiterated that Jakarta was seeking "a permanent and comprehensive" settlement rather than a temporary solution to the Indonesian Military-GAM conflict in Aceh, which first began in 1976.
The Indonesian delegation will include Minister of Justice and Human Rights Hamid Awaluddin as the chief negotiator; along with Minister of Communications and Information Sofyan Djalil and other state officials, while Widodo would oversee the delegation.
The same group earlier held talks with the GAM leaders in Helsinki in January but came out with no long-term results. At that time GAM was only interested in establishing a temporary cease fire in Aceh to ensure effective humanitarian relief operations in the tsunami-hit province.
Asked whether GAM had indicated its willingness to accept the special autonomy scheme, Widodo said: "We'll talk the details there. But the confirmation (from the mediator) makes us expect more concrete results (from the second-round meeting)."
Meanwhile, Sofyan, who is an Aceh native, said that positive results from the coming peace talks would be crucial for the long-term reconstruction and development of Aceh, which bore the brunt of the Asian tsunami where more than 200,000 people were killed or remained missing.
"We need to talk to all the Acehnese when we rebuild Aceh, including to our GAM brothers. Any settlement of the conflict would be beneficial for the development of a new and better Aceh," he said.
Both the government and GAM had earlier agreed to a temporary cease fire plan via the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement signed in 2002.
That truce broke down in 2003 and the government later imposed martial law in the province and undertook a large-scale military offensive against GAM rebels.
Rights groups have accused the military of killing many civilians and of committing other human rights abuses during the offensive.
Meanwhile, a GAM delegation member Noerdin Abdulhamid said that the group was ready to talk with the Indonesian delegation, but insisted that they would not accept the special autonomy offer.
"We have received the invitation (sent by the CMI) and know that the meeting will begin by discussing the special autonomy for Aceh, but we have no intention of accepting the concept," Noerdin told The Jakarta Post by phone from Sweden.
Noerdin said that the GAM delegation, to be led by GAM's prime minister for Aceh Malik Mahmood, had other points on their agenda, including an offer of a cease-fire.
Other GAM members set to attend the meeting are Aceh's shadow foreign minister Zaini Abdullah, along with GAM senior official Mohammed Nur Djuli and spokesman Bakhtiar Abdullah.