Salim Osman, Banda Aceh – All hopes for peace in the troubled Aceh province now rest on about 200 monitors who will oversee the implementation of the accord, with mistrust still prevailing between the Indonesian government and rebels.

The monitors will supervise key aspects of the accord reached on Monday – from demobilising the rebels to destroying weapons and supervising the withdrawal of government troops.

Each of these tasks is fraught with difficulties, said analyst Indria Samego from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences.

The team, known as the Aceh Monitoring Mission (AMM), will comprise unarmed personnel from the European Union and Asean countries. More than 300 elite police guards are expected to provide round-the-clock security for them. The monitors will spend up to a year in Aceh.

The team is slated to begin work on Sept 15 when the rebels are expected to turn in their arms at 12 centres and receive help for reintegrating into society.

Under the accord, the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) will disband its 3,000 rebels, who have to surrender their arms by December. In return, each combatant will receive 2ha of land and start-up supplies to become a farmer or fisherman in the province.

Rebels and political prisoners will be granted amnesty by the end of this month.

Already, an advance team of 80 AMM officials, led by Dutch diplomat Pieter Feith, is in Aceh to do the groundwork, namely to set up the centres and plan their work ahead.

Mr Feith, in his remarks to reporters in Banda Aceh and Lhokseumawe, was upbeat that the peace accord could work this time. He said he held enough authority to make the rebels and government abide by the accord.

The Indonesian government has agreed to cut the number of troops by half to 14,700 by December and to reduce the police force to 9,100 by the end of the year. 'This time, the head of mission has a greater authority as recognised by the two parties to take binding decisions,' said Mr Feith.

He added that he had authority over an amnesty arrangement for rebels which forms a crucial part of the pact and that he had greater authority 'in the day-by-day management of the operation' than earlier arrangements.

'If there is no willingness to abide by my decisions, I will report to the highest levels of authority in the government and in the GAM political leadership as well as the European Union and the Asean contributing states,' he said.

The appointment of monitors from the EU and Asean 'provides better leverage to ensure full implementation of the agreement', he added.

The pact stipulates that as a rule, all disputes will be resolved by the head of the monitoring mission, whose decisions will be binding on the parties.

Previous attempts to end the 30-year-old conflict had ended in failure partly because of the ineffectiveness of the monitors and weak enforcement.

In December 2002, the government and GAM had signed the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement which was brokered by the Geneva-based Henry Dunant Centre.

This was followed by the establishment of the Joint Security Committee (JSC) to monitor the peace process.

But Jakarta accused GAM of failing to disarm its rebels and clashes continued in areas declared by the JSC as the peace zones.

The extended talks in Tokyo collapsed and Ms Megawati Sukarnoputri, who was Indonesian president at the time, on May 19, 2003 signed a decree imposing martial law and ordered the offensive in Aceh.