Indonesia's government and Aceh rebels have reached a peace deal to end a 29-year insurgency in the tsunami-devastated province, a top Indonesian official said Sunday.
A draft peace deal submitted by the rebel Free Aceh Movement was approved Saturday by the Indonesian president in Jakarta, said Communications Minister Sofyan Djalil, one of the lead negotiators at peace talks in Finland.
On Saturday, negotiators from both sides said they had reached a tentative agreement to end one of the world's longest-running wars.
The peace deal will ease the delivery of international reconstruction aid to the province of 4.1 million inhabitants which was severely damaged by the Dec. 26 tsunami that killed at least 130,000 people.
The draft accord, which hinged on allowing the separatist Free Aceh Movement to form its own political party, was sent to Jakarta for approval by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
"The president has agreed to the draft submitted by GAM about political parties" Djalil said Sunday morning, referring to the Free Aceh Movement by its Indonesian acronym. "Finally we have reached common understanding about the issues we discussed last night."
The two sides are meeting Friday to initial the deal seen as the best chance yet of ending the three decades of fighting that has killed 15,000 people in Aceh, an oil and gas rich province on the northern tip of Sumatra Island. The peace accord will be signed in mid-August at a formal ceremony in the Finnish capital.
The agreement reportedly will allow the separatists to field individual candidates in local elections next April for town mayors. The government also has undertaken to change a law banning local political parties – a key rebel demand – within 18 months.
The draft agreement also provides for the withdrawal of most of the 50,000 Indonesian troops and paramilitary police deployed to the province, and the disarmament of the 5,000-strong guerrilla force. This will be overseen by about 250 European Union observers and at least 100 monitors from the association of Southeast Asian Nations.
"That's fantastic, it's encouraging to know that the administration in Jakarta has taken this process seriously and supports the work of its own negotiators and the agreement they have reached," said Damien Kingsbury, an Australian academic who is part of the Acehnese delegation in the Finnish capital.
In Jakarta, Yudhoyono said rebels will be given three months to disarm. He made the comments to reporters before the draft agreement was announced.
"If the conflict is declared over, then within about three months GAM will be expected to hand over its guns which would then be destroyed," Yudhoyono said.
Experts say that a peace formula for Aceh would help defuse separatist tensions that have threatened to tear Indonesia apart since the ouster of dictator Suharto in 1998 and East Timor's secession a year later. It would also provide a blueprint for resolving another secessionist crisis in Papua, at the other end of Indonesia's vast archipelago.
The accord will represent a political success for Yudhoyono, whose administration has been sharply criticized by nationalist lawmakers for "internationalizing" the war by agreeing to the talks held in Finland under the auspices of former President Martti Ahtisaari.
The peace process was restarted immediately after the Dec. 26 disaster, when both the Indonesian administration and the Acehnese government-in-exile in Sweden came under intense international pressure to end the long-running war. prior to that, the province had been a closed area of military operations. Thousands of foreign relief troops and relief workers were allowed in to help alleviate the humanitarian disaster.
The two sides have met five times since then in Helsinki. The current, final round of talks opened on Tuesday.