Tony Hotland, Jakarta – The Acehnese will not be getting local political parties in the near future, home affairs minister M. Ma'ruf announced Wednesday. He said Jakarta had temporarily ruled out the creation of local political parties, pending consultation with the House of Representatives.

The idea of setting up local parties in the province – one of the most crucial issues during talks between the Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) before a peace agreement last August – has provoked intense debate in the House and among political analysts.

Ma'ruf said the issue had been dropped from the bill on the political system in Aceh, which will be submitted to the House for deliberation by the end of this week, but future revisions were "possible".

"In the (memorandum of understanding), we were given between one year and 18 months to provide a basis for the creation of local parties, which means we have until February 2007. We still need to talk this through," he said after meeting with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and other ministers to discuss the bill.

The MOU Ma'ruf referred to was signed in August last year to end the conflict between the government and GAM. It stipulates that Jakarta will facilitate the creation of local political parties in Aceh, with the provision that they must meet national requirements for the establishment of parties.

The MOU was used as the reference point for the bill on Aceh.

Ma'ruf said the bill, which is expected to be passed into law by March 31, could be amended at a later date to accommodate the establishment of local parties. Other contentious issues include the use of "Aceh" instead of "Aceh administration" in the title of the bill.

State Secretary Yusril Ihza Mahendra said this did not imply Aceh would be an independent administration but was simply a matter of semantics.

He said another sensitive issue was whether Aceh would be allowed to accept foreign loans or grants without central government approval.

"These two issues are basically feasible, but will require certain adjustments at the local level with the issuance of a qanun (Aceh bylaw)." Yusril said most of the potentially contentious terms were adequately defined to prevent any misinterpretations.

"We have problems using the correct and common terms since we're using the MOU as our reference, and many terms in the MOU are quite uncommon in our laws." Yusril said GAM representatives had participated in the creation of the bill. It was later reviewed by the Home Affairs Ministry.