Alue Gintong – The military operation to crush the rebellion in the Aceh province will be over within a year, President Megawati Sukarnoputri said.

Megawati, who flew into Aceh under heavy security today, pledged an end to the fighting at a ceremony where she addressed troops who have been battling since May 2003 after the collapse of a truce.

"God willing, by next year, these problems can be resolved, including social and economic problems, so that the civil emergency can be lifted," she said.

Aceh, on the northern tip of Indonesia's Sumatra island, has been under a restrictive state of "civil emergency" since martial law, imposed at the start of the military operation, was lifted in May this year.

Shortly before Megawati's comments to troops at Alue Gintong, a part of rural Aceh once a bastion of the rebel Free Aceh Movement or GAM, guerrilla leaders pledged to continue their struggle, which began in 1976.

"GAM won't be finished off because GAM is the people of Aceh," one of the movement's military commanders told Agence France-Presse in Jakarta. "If there is still one Acehnese person in our land the struggle will continue."

He was reacting to comments yesterday by Indonesian armed forces commander General Endriartono Sutarto who in a briefing to troops on the eve of Megawati's visit urged them to "destroy" GAM.

The military yesterday claimed that at least 1,159 separatist rebels have been killed in the past 10 months of its anti-rebel campaign, showing there had been little let up in the operation despite official assurances of peace.

During her visit the president, wearing a Muslim headscarf in recognition of the region's conservative Islamic views, told soldiers they are "doing a noble task defending the country from a group of people who want to break away."