- Title: FINLAND: PEACE TALKS BETWEEN INDONESIA AND ACEH REBELS
- Date: 12th April 2005
- Summary: (BN16) HELSINKI, FINLAND (APRIL 12, 2005) (REUTERS - ACCESSES ALL) 1. SLV CARS ARRIVING OUTSIDE INDONESIAN EMBASSY AND MINISTER OF COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION SOFYAN DJALIL GETTING OUT OF CAR. 0.18 2. SV DJALIL WALKING INTO EMBASSY 0.36 3. SLV INDONESIAN DELEGATED WALKING INTO EMBASSY GREETING A GIRL 0.42 4. SLV GATES TO EMBASSY C
- Embargoed: 27th April 2005 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: HELSINKI, FINLAND
- Country: Finland
- Reuters ID: LVA6F2OYXQLFFHNUIB5ZW2Y4E4MG
- Story Text: Self government supersedes ceasefire in Aceh talks.
Peace talks between Indonesia and Aceh rebels on
Tuesday (April 12) covered details of a rebel plan for self
government, with earlier talk of a quick interim ceasefire
shelved as the sides seek to end three decades of fighting.
The negotiations, set to run until Sunday (April 17),
aim to build on a breakthrough in February, when the Free
Aceh Movement (GAM) put aside demands for full independence
and Indonesia said it would consider self-rule for the
province.
The two sides were brought together by the Dec. 26
Indian Ocean tsunami, which devastated Aceh and left nearly
130,000 Indonesians dead and more than 500,000 homeless in
the gas-rich province on the tip of the island of Sumatra.
A GAM adviser had earlier said the rebels planned to
ask for a temporary ceasefire during the nine-hour first
day of talks, but a spokesman said later this had been
temporarily put aside as the sides focused instead on the
issue of self government.
"We have discussed deeply some of the hard core issues
... and we are working towards finding a solution to that
(self government)," GAM spokesman Abdullah Bakhtiar told
Reuters.
"It was tough, it was hard, but at the same time we are
making progress," an exhausted Bakhtiar said.
The mediator of the talks, former Finnish President
Martti Ahtisaari, has previously said he sees a ceasefire
not as an end in itself, but as part of an overall peace
package. This was echoed by an Indonesian government source
on Tuesday.
"The Indonesian government are not talking about a
ceasefire, we will only talk about a comprehensive solution directly
fo
r peace," the source familiar with the talks
told Reuters in Jakarta.
A spokeswoman at Ahtisaari's Crisis Management
Initiative (CMI) group said the negotiations were carried
out in a constructive spirit, and covered items such as
political prisoners and future elections.
GAM has been fighting a simmering rebellion against the
Indonesian government for nearly 30 years, with at least
12,000 estimated to have died in the fighting, many of them
civilians.
Both sides accuse the other of human rights violations.
Continued fighting in the region and a war of words set
the tone ahead the latest round of talks, which started in
January.
At the weekend, GAM accused CMI of taking Jakarta's
line on the issue of "special autonomy" for Aceh, and
delivered a letter of protest to Ahtisaari on Monday,
although this was not seen as a major sticking point in the
talks.
The Indonesian government and an adviser to the rebels
have both said a peace deal was possible this year.
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