UN intervention in Aceh

The killing of the German national and the wounding of his companion -- said to be tourists in their fifties -- by the Indonesian military made the headlines over here in Belgium as, I would guess, in many other European Union countries, as well as in the United States.

Aceh is becoming a real problem for Indonesia in the international arena. In all respects, it is bad to have such a lack of diplomacy to solve the recurring geographical problems of the country internally, without having to use armed force.

Maybe Aceh is a problem even worse than East Timor, because people here are asking why a legal province is trying to separate from Indonesia. They have also started wondering why the Indonesian army is using weapons against its own people.

Many people have defined the Aceh issue as an act of colonialism, since they (rightly?) suppose that the Acehnese want freedom from Indonesia.

More and more people appear to be willing to support a scenario in which a kind of UN military intervention in Aceh, as in Kosovo, could bring some real peace to the region (a peace broken by Indonesians amongst themselves, or is it simply a lack of good governance?).

Of course, this scenario is impossible right now since there are many more important -- unfortunately -- problems to be solved in the world.

YVAN MAGAIN, Tubize, Belgium