Anna Peltola, Stockholm – Separatist rebels in Indonesia's troubled Aceh province said on Tuesday they would not meet Jakarta representatives face-to-face in peace talks scheduled for this weekend.
Zaini Abdullah, Aceh's health minister in exile and a key negotiator in previous peace talks, said plans to meet in Geneva on Saturday and Sunday had been dropped because of the death of the group's military chief in a gunfight last week.
"After Abdullah Syafei was killed, everything has changed. We have no more confidence in Indonesia," Zaini Abdullah told Reuters in an interview. The rebel movement of the resource-rich province, which accounts for one fifth of the country's oil and gas exports, has its headquarters in Stockholm.
Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) were due to start peace talks in Geneva on Saturday on the decades-old separatist conflict in which thousands of people have been killed.
But after Indonesian police shot dead GAM's top military commander Syafei in Aceh on Tuesday, the independence-seeking group had now decided just to meet the mediators and would not hold direct talks with the Indonesian side, Abdullah said. "We may need more time to go back to Geneva ... at least we have to postpone this meeting," he said.
The rebels and Jakarta have met in a number of encounters since 2000.Both sides have called several ceasefires in recent years but these have largely been ignored in the staunchly Moslem province in the northern tip of Sumatra island. "The door for peaceful negotiations is still open but we need them [Indonesia] to fulfil minimum conditions – stop killing," Abdullah said.
On Friday, a GAM spokesman said that the rebel group still wanted to negotiate but peace remained an uphill task. "The possibility of dialogue is still open and always exists...but the reality on the field is that more war is looming," Sofyan Daud told Reuters.
Demands full independence
The rebels have said they want nothing less than full independence for Aceh. Jakarta has ruled this out and this month said it planned to revive a military command in the area.
Resentment against Jakarta's rule runs deep after two decades of often savage military operations – including murder, torture and the alleged massacre of 57 GAM members in Betung Ateuh district in 1999 – and what locals see as the plundering of their wealth of resources.
Four key gas fields owned by a unit of US-based ExxonMobil Corp are located in the rebel stronghold of North Aceh.
Indonesia's President Megawati Sukarnoputri, a staunch nationalist, has vowed to resolve the conflict, but analysts say Syafei's killing could lead to more bloodshed.
Aceh is only one of several areas of turmoil in Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous state, which has in the past few years been plagued by violence sparked by issues ranging from separatism to communal and religious differences.