Bill Guerin – Indonesia's economy, the biggest in Southeast Asia, may not be badly hit by the devastating tsunami disaster. "Given that the energy [mainly oil and natural gas] production facilities in Aceh or Northern Sumatra have survived the tsunami, the overall damage to Indonesia's economy appears to be minimal," United States investment bank Morgan Stanley said last week.

New York – The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply troubled by Indonesian government restrictions on reporting in the province of Aceh, which was devastated in the December tsunami. CPJ called on the government today to lift the limitations immediately so independent journalists can fully document the massive international humanitarian effort.

The desire by the government of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to create an opportunity for a peace agreement and end the armed conflict with the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) should be welcomed all elements of society. This positive signal should also be welcomed by GAM.

Damien Kingsbury – The arrival in Aceh of militant Islamic fundamentalist groups has raised the prospect of conflict with foreign aid workers and troops, including Australians, who are helping the tsunami relief operation.

Canberra – Australia's prime minister on Wednesday supported the Indonesian government's demand that foreign aid workers and journalists report their movements outside tsunami-battered Aceh's provincial capital.

Marian Carroll, Jakarta – An Australian Catholic priest yesterday announced an alliance with Indonesia's second largest Muslim organisation to build an orphanage in devastated Aceh province, despite warnings that radical Islamic groups could stir up tensions.

Two-thirds of the total fatalities in the tsunami disaster in Aceh were women and children as they were the ones left at home along the affected coastline.

Jakarta – Indonesian Military (TNI) chief General Endriartono Sutarto has said that Indonesian government needed not to impose non-war martial law in the province of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam (NAD).

Matthew Moore, Banda Aceh – Alwi Shihab couldn't help himself. Barely two hours after a US Seahawk helicopter crashed near Banda Aceh's airport, the Indonesian minister responsible for the relief effort explained what had gone wrong to a news conference of mainly foreign journalists.

Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak and Riyadi Suparno, Banda Aceh – The government and the military are caught between a rock and a hard place regarding the presence of more than 2,000 foreign nationals in disaster-hit Aceh.

Guests: Prof. William Liddle, Prof. Jeffrey Winters

Jim Lehrer: Next, politics and aid in the devastated Indonesian province of Aceh. We start with a report from James Mates of Independent Television News.

Paul Toohey – The stragglers below wave plastic flags and shirts as the US Navy Seahawk helicopter settles on an island of broken tarmac in the no-longer-existent village of Panga, some 100km south of Banda Aceh. It is the briefest of touchdowns.

Matthew Moore in Banda Aceh and Karuni Rompies – Rebels in Indonesia's tsunami-stricken province of Aceh have threatened to abandon their two-week-old cease-fire unless the Indonesian military agrees to stop action against them.

INFID Statement on the meeting of the Paris Club, on January 12, 2005 and the Consultative Group on Indonesia on January 19 and 20, 2005

Banda Aceh – Leaders in the international tsunami aid effort expressed concern about how curbs on the movement of workers and a deadline for foreign troops to leave would affect relief in Indonesia's worst-hit Aceh province.

Andrew Quinn, Jakarta – As cash donations pour in from around the world for the victims of Asia's tsunami, fears are rife that corruption will divert big chunks of the aid money before it reaches the disaster zone.

The Indonesian military imposed sweeping restrictions on foreign aid workers in tsunami-hit Aceh, saying the move was needed to curtail a growing threat from separatist rebels.

Military chief General Endriartono Sutarto told reporters the armed forces would accompany and monitor aid groups on all missions outside the provincial capital of Banda Aceh.

On December 25, 2004, one day before Aceh was devastated by an earthquake-driven tsunami, the Indonesian military (TNI) announced that it had just killed eighteen guerrillas in the province.[1] Such news had long since become routine. A week earlier, the TNI killed five.[2] TNI chief Gen.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Monday (10/1/05) met with the ambassadors of Britain, Japan, Libya, Singapore, Sweden and the US to hear their views on how to resolve the separatist conflict in Aceh, said a senior government official.

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, Jakarta – The first hearing of a judicial review by the Constitutional Court last week of several contentious articles of Law No. 32/2004 concerning direct elections of regional leaders (provincial governors, mayors and regents) has revealed significant public concerns over weaknesses in the law.

Aboeprijadi Santoso, Amsterdam – Indonesia has asked East Timor to initiate a joint-commission of truth and reconciliation to resolve the issue of the violence during and after the United Nations-organized vote in East Timor in 1999.

The Indonesian government said that separatist rebels were not infiltrating refugee camps in tsunami-hit Aceh province and were not responsible for a shooting near the main UN compound, contradicting assertions a day earlier by the country's military and police.

As the Aceh aid effort gathers pace, reports have been emerging from the battered province that Indonesian troops sent in to help distribute aid have instead been selling the supplies to the hungry and desperate victims of the tsunami. The Indonesian military meanwhile has claimed Acehnese rebels have themselves been blocking access to clean water supplies.

Shawn Donnan in Jakarta and David Ibison in Banda Aceh – The government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono threw open the doors to Aceh, the scene of a long-running separatist insurgency, in the days following the December 26 tsunamis that left more than 100,000 dead in the province, ending a de-facto ban on foreign aid groups working there.

John Pilger – The west's crusaders, the United States and Britain, are giving less to help the tsunami victims than the cost of a Stealth bomber or a week's bloody occupation of Iraq. The bill for George Bush's coming inauguration party would rebuild much of the coastline of Sri Lanka.

Jakarta – The Office of the State Minister for the Environment says its investigation into pollution that damage coral reefs and mangrove forests in Thousand Islands is almost complete.

Concerns remained that an unknown number of tsunami survivors in Indonesia's Aceh province have not received any aid, two weeks after the disaster that killed more than 104,000 people there.

The Australian government should be more vocal about calling an end to hostilities in Aceh, the United Nations Association said.

Thousands of Acehnese have died in three decades of fighting against Indonesian troops over independence for the region, which is now coming to grips with the loss of more than 100,000 people in the Boxing Day tsunami.

Matthew Moore and Karuni Rompies – They look like barbeque chips or mulga roots and exude a comforting smell drifting between fresh timber and flowers. Burn them and they produce rich smoke said to warm the lungs and drive out asthma. Distil them and they'll produce oil so potent it can perfume a beard for weeks.

Indonesia's military campaign to crush a long-running rebellion in Aceh and restrictions imposed on aid groups in the remote province are hindering disaster relief efforts, human rights groups warned.

Jane Perlez, Lamlhom – In the shade of a stand of coconut trees, Basri Ahmad buried his 19-year-old son on Friday, a victim not of earthquake or ocean waves but of the civil conflict that sowed death in Aceh long before the recent devastation.

Peter S. Goodman, Meulaboh – From the indentation her head left in the mud, the girl seemed about 5 years old. The soldiers recalled they found her face down under a collapsed brick wall.

Dan Eaton and Achmad Sukarsono, Banda Aceh – Drive south from this devastated city and the road just stops.

Ahead lies territory whose features have been erased – just like the hopes and plans of hundreds of thousands of its residents left homeless by the Indian Ocean tsunami.

Matthew Moore, Banda Aceh – Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has labelled the tsunami calamity "the greatest challenge of my presidency so far".

For a man who has been in office less than three months, it was an odd remark but also a sign of how difficult it has been for Indonesia's Government to understand and respond to what has happened in Aceh.

Jonathan Head, Banda Aceh – Indonesian soldiers say their tsunami relief work in the province of Aceh is being hindered by clashes with the rebels who have been fighting a bitter separatist conflict. The rebels in turn accuse the military of using the disaster as a pretext for a renewed offensive.

Fadli, Batam – Dozens of survivors of the quake-triggered tsunami have found they cannot even enter Batam to find their relatives. Authorities denied them entry because they failed to meet requirements as stated in the city's regulations.

Martin Chulov – Australian journalists who witnessed a confrontation between Indonesian soldiers and alleged separatists in tsunami-ravaged Sumatra yesterday were ordered to leave the area and warned not to report on the incident.

Kupang – Atambua Bishop Anton Pain Ratu has called on the Timor Leste government to grant amnesty to former pro-Jakarta militia as part of efforts to end refugee problems in West Timor, East Nusa Tenggara province.

Forum-Asia, an Asian-based human rights watchdog, expressed concern on Wednesday over the alleged abuse of aid for tsunami victims in Aceh as some officials were selling the food aid to survivors.

Sidney Blumenthal – Two days after the tsunami struck, President Bush, who had made no public statement, was vacationing at his ranch in Texas, and a junior spokesman was trotted out. The offer of US aid was $15m – $2m less than the star pitcher of the Boston Red Sox was paid that year.

Matthew Moore, Banda Aceh – Radical Islamic groups best known for smashing bars and violent support of the jailed cleric Abu Bakar Bashir have sent large contingents of their members to Aceh with funding provided by the Indonesian Government.

Jane Perlez, Banda Aceh – In the makeshift recovery room, Dr. Paul Shumack crouched on the floor cradling the head of Novi, 35, who had already lost her husband and only child to the tsunami, and now her right leg.

The doctor had just amputated it to the buttock. Short of supplies, the surgical team had been forced to use what was described as a handsaw.

A regional human rights group has accused the Indonesian Defense Forces (TNI) of hampering the distribution of aid to tsunami survivors in Aceh province.

The Bangkok-based Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development made the accusation in the following press release:

M. Taufiqurrahman, Jakarta – Aid organizations working for humanitarian relief programs in tsunami-hit Aceh complained on Wednesday that instead of providing them with assistance, the government had hampered effective efforts to mitigate the effects of the calamity.

Bangkok – The Indonesian military is hampering efforts to distribute aid to tsunami survivors in Aceh province, denying assistance and even abusing some survivors, a regional human rights organization is alleging.

John Mcbeth, Jakarta – When relief workers brought the first aid to the devastated Western coast of Aceh a few days after the December 26 earthquake, they were greeted by one surviving Indonesian soldier asking plaintively: "Where is America, where is America?" America, in the form of a carrier battle group, urgently-needed helicopters and giant cargo planes, arrived in force in ear

Jakarta – At least 1,000 teachers have been reported missing in Aceh and over 50 percent of school buildings devastated by last week's tsunamis, an official said on Wednesday.

Sian Powell, Jakarta – The Indonesian military is continuing to wage war with separatist rebels in the hills of Aceh as world leaders put the finishing touches to a multi-billion-dollar aid and investment package for the devastated province.

Edward Cody, Banda Aceh – Aceh's highly influential Islamic clerics have explained the giant wave that devastated this overwhelmingly Muslim region as a warning to the faithful that they must more strictly observe their religion, including a ban on Muslims killing Muslims.

Matthew Moore, Banda Aceh – They call them refugee camps, but the scores of little plastic tent settlements that have sprung up across Aceh are unlike the refugee camps that have long been part of this war-torn province.