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Indonesia to pull 2,600 troops on Tuesday

Source
Reuters - September 19, 2005

Jakarta – Indonesia will pull 2,600 soldiers out of Aceh province on Tuesday as it steps up the withdrawal of troops under a peace agreement that ended decades of conflict with rebels, an army spokesman said.

On Sunday, 800 troops were shipped out after the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) fulfilled its part of the first phase of the landmark Helsinki pact by surrendering more than a quarter of its arsenal.

"Four battalions, each consisting of 650 troops, will leave Aceh on September 20. Other departures of troops are scheduled for September 21, 23 and 25," army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Erie Soetiko said on Monday in the North Aceh town of Lhokseumawe, the main embarkation port for the troops.

By September 25, 6,000 soldiers would have left under the first phase of the peace pact.

Indonesian officials have said the troop pullout would take place in step with the pace of the rebel weapon decommissioning.

After the September phase, three more rounds of weapons handovers and troop and police withdrawals are scheduled until the end of December.

Indonesia had more than 30,000 soldiers as well as about 15,000 police in Aceh on the northernmost tip of Sumatra island before the August 15 deal.

Fighting between GAM and government forces began in 1976 and killed some 15,000 people, mostly civilians. In May 2003, a previous truce collapsed over differences in interpretation of that pact, especially over rebel disarmament.

The rebels and the government were pushed back to the negotiating table after a massive earthquake and tsunami on December 26 left 170,000 people dead or missing in Aceh.

The pact will make it easier for aid agencies to carry out a huge $5 billion post-tsunami reconstruction program.

A successful agreement should also attract fresh investment to the resource-rich province of four million people.

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