Aceh separatists urged Indonesian officials to call a ceasefire as a gesture of goodwill as the two parties held a third round of peace talks n Helsinki aimed at ending a conflict that has killed more than 12,000 people.
"It is time that the Indonesian government show some good faith... and call a ceasefire as a gesture of good will," Damien Kingsbury, a political advisor to the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), told AFP. The fresh peace negotiations, which were driven forth by the need for international aid to reach the tsunami-struck Aceh province, are scheduled to last six days and, like the first two rounds in January and February, are being mediated by former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari.
Talking on the phone from the Koeningstedt estate outside Helsinki where the talks were being held, Kingsbury insisted that GAM had already shown goodwill by coming to the talks and agreeing to not push its claim of full independence, which Indonesia has said is unacceptable.
"GAM is now asking that the Indonesian government reciprocate," he said, adding that the continued fighting on the ground in Aceh was "seen as a sign of bad faith".
Negotiators for the rebels have called on Indonesia to ensure a ceasefire "at least for the period of the talks", Kingsbury said, insisting that the government "needs to show not just that it has the will, but also the ability to halt the fighting".
Negotiators for the rebels have requested a response from the Indonesians within the next 24 hours, he said.
GAM has been fighting for nearly 29 years for a separate homeland in the western Indonesian province, accusing Jakarta of plundering the region's mineral wealth and leaving its people trapped in poverty. GAM has also been accused of abuses.
When the two delegations met for the first round of talks in January it was the first time they stood face-to-face since May 2003, when the government declared martial law, launching a major military offensive and barring foreign press and aid workers from the province.
The renewed efforts to reach a peaceful solution were prompted by a need for international aid to reach Aceh, which bore the brunt of the catastrophic earthquake and tsunamis last December. More than 126,000 people were killed in that region alone.
It is hoped that the six days of discussions, scheduled to wrap up on Sunday afternoon, will give the parties time to flesh out the details and a timetable for proposals concerning topics like special autonomy, security arrangements, economic relations, amnesty and outside monitoring.
While full independence is not on the table, GAM insists that sovereignty remains its ultimate goal. "Independence is still not on the table, since there would be no negotiations if it was, but this does not mean that we will stop our main struggle, which is for independence," GAM's Stockholm-based spokesman Bakhtiar Abdullah told AFP last week.
And although the second round of talks ended on a positive note with both sides reporting progress towards an agreement on a special autonomy for the region, continued fighting on the ground appears to have clouded the horizon. The Indonesian army has admitted to killing more than 260 rebels since the tsunami struck on December 26.
Ahtisaari's Crisis Management Initiative (CMI), which is organizing the talks, meanwhile expressed cautious optimism as the first day of talks were wrapping up. "There is generally quite a constructive mood. There was no real tension in the meeting," CMI director of state-building and democracy Meeri-Maria Jaarva told AFP as the parties were sitting down for dinner together at the end of the day.