Banda Aceh – Separatist guerrillas in Indonesia's restive province of Aceh will respect a peace pact to be signed with the government, one of their top spokesmen said.
The pact aims at ending nearly three decades of violent conflict in Aceh between the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and government forces, which has already claimed almost 15,000 lives. Two previous truces since 2000 have failed.
The rebels "agree with all points in the peace pact. We will obey and respect the decisions of our leaders who negotiated them in Helsinki," spokesman Sofyan Daud told AFP.
Daud, who also heads the North Aceh rebel command, was speaking by telephone from Pidie district, one of the main guerrilla strongholds in this resource-rich province at the northern tip of Sumatra island.
Staunchly Muslim Aceh has been rocked by bloodshed since 1976 when rebels launched an uprising aimed at creating an independent Islamic state. Almost 15,000 people have since been killed, most of them civilians.
Last December's catastrophic tsunami, which hit Aceh especially hard, killing at least 131,000 people, acted as a catalyst for new peace negotiations.
With the help of Finnish negotiators, the two sides in July agreed to the outline of the deal, which was to be signed in Helsinki at 0830 GMT.
GAM dropped its demand for independence and said it would disarm, while the government pledged to withdraw troops from the province once the rebels hand in their weapons, and allow the creation of local political parties.
Daud said he had spoken with the movement's exiled self-styled leaders in Sweden, including prime minister Malik Mahmud, foreign minister Zaini Abdullah and chief rebel spokesman Bakhtiar Abdullah.
"I told them that there are no changes and that the TNI (Indonesian armed forces) are still in position at their outposts in villages."
His leaders urged the guerrillas to respect the agreement, he said, asking them to "remain patient and not to engage in offensives against the TNI. They also asked us not to engage in actions that could jeopardise the agreement. "We will obey those instructions," he said.
All 17 GAM regional rebel commanders have been told about the deal, he said, adding that the rebels were prepared to surrender their weapons to 200 foreign peace monitors who will oversee the implementation of the pact.
"But so far, the locations for surrendering weapons has not been decided. On the matter of how many weapons and personnel we have, that is still a secret," Daud said, adding that the monitors could release this information later.
He said he was hopeful that the Indonesian military would also abide by the agreement and urged the peace monitors to fan out widely into rural areas.
"They should set up as many outposts as possible in rural areas so that anyone can report any violations of the pact to them and they can take rapid actions," he said.
"This would prevent mutual pointing of fingers between GAM and the government." If both sides stick to the pact, Daud said he was "convinced that this problem can be settled this time. The most important (thing) is not the signing of the peace pact but its implementation on the field."