INDONESIA: Indonesia and Aceh rebels will sign a truce on August 15th after agreeing yesterday a formula for ending the 30-year-old conflict that has cost 12,000 lives in the province devastated by last December's tsunami.
Jakarta and the Free Aceh Movement (Gam) initialled a deal on how to disarm the guerrillas, withdraw Indonesian troops, monitor a ceasefire and reintegrate the rebels socially and politically.
It will be formally signed in Helsinki next month.
"It is a historic moment. We finally reach a peaceful settlement that has been longed for so many years by the people of Aceh and by the people of Indonesia," Indonesian information minister Sofyan Djalil told Reuters at the talks in Finland.
"Society can live peacefully and we can rebuild Aceh after it has been destroyed by the tsunami," he said.
In the devoutly Muslim province of four million people on the northern tip of the island of Sumatra, which has a long history of revolt against Jakarta and Dutch colonial rule, there was little patience with the political details of the talks.
"I don't know anything about negotiations. What I want is just peace in which I can work and my children can grow," said Jamaluddin, who builds wells in the local capital Banda Aceh.
Gam said they had taken a chance on the deal with Jakarta, "because we want to give the people of Aceh a chance to rebuild after the devastating tsunami and to provide them with the opportunity to determine their own internal affairs.
"But this leap of faith is not without risks, and we now require the Indonesian government to exercise full authority over the Indonesian military in order to allow this process to succeed," said a Gam representative Bakhtiar Abdullah speaking in Helsinki.
The agreement sets a tight schedule for decommissioning Gam fighters and withdrawing Indonesian troops, who clashed as recently as Friday when Gam said a rebel was killed.
The violence has hampered the exploitation of Aceh's rich natural gas deposits and humanitarian aid for tsunami victims.
The wave that left 170,000 Indonesians dead or missing prompted both sides to return to talks. Success looked possible after Gam agreed in February to drop demands for independence.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told reporters in Jakarta his government would offer the guerrillas an amnesty and scale down its military and police presence once the deal is signed.
The European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) will help monitor the truce.