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Rebels urge Mobil to leave Aceh for safety reasons

Source
Agence France Presse - January 3, 2001

Banda Aceh – Separatist rebels in Indonesia's Aceh province said Wednesday they had warned Mobil Oil Indonesia, a subsidiary of US-based Exxon Mobil, to leave the region for its own safety.

"We have urged the top management of Exxon Mobil to leave Aceh immediately because we cannot guarantee their safety if Jakarta imposes a state of emergency in Aceh," Abu Sofyan Daud, North Aceh-based army commander of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), told AFP.

"We cannot be held responsible for any damage suffered by Mobil Oil in the event that we attack Indonesian soldiers in the company's complex," he added.

Daud said foreign investors in the resource-rich province on the northern tip of Sumatra could come back to Aceh once it had gained independence from Jakarta.

GAM has been fighting for an independent Islamic sultanate of Aceh for 25 years. Mobil runs the huge Arun Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) production complex in Aceh.

"We call on them to stop exploiting Aceh's land for the benefit of the colonialist government in Jakarta while our people are starving and killed by Indonesian security forces," Daud said.

He charged that Indonesian soldiers and police had misused "facilities" provided by Mobil Oil, ostensibly for the company's security, to quash separatist rebels.

In the past two years GAM guerillas have mounted many attacks on government security guards posted at Mobil Oil, causing disruption to the company's activities. The government and the rebels signed a three-month truce in May, which was extended for another three months in September.

However officials in Jakarta have said the truce will not be extended again as it had failed to stop the violence. More than 850 people were killed in the violence in Aceh last year despite the shaky truce.

Jakarta, determined to reach a political solution to the dispute, has said talks with GAM's exiled leadership will resume in Europe next week.

Separatism in Aceh has been fuelled by Jakarta's failure to ensure the province benefits from its natural wealth and by years of harsh military repression aimed at wiping out the rebellion.

Jakarta, still smarting over the loss of East Timor in a UN- supervised ballot in 1999, has ruled out independence for Aceh promising broad autonomy instead.

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