Former President Ahtisaari meets with both sides of Aceh dispute

Finnish expert has high hopes for Vantaa discussions

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Former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari met with representatives of the Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), who arrived in Finland on Thursday for talks aimed at ending fighting between government forces and separatist rebels in Aceh Province.
      The discussions are being held at the Königstedt Manor in Vantaa, north of Helsinki. They are scheduled to continue until Sunday.
      According to the office of the Crisis Management Initiative (CMI), Ahtisaari met with both sides separately to map out the issues to be discussed at the negotiating table.
      Little information on the talks themselves was forthcoming. Even the exact composition of the delegations was kept a secret.
     
"The spirit and the signals that we have received are positive", said GAM spokesman Bakhtiar Abdullah to the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) on Thursday. He said that the top priority now is to make sure that aid is delivered to the victims of the recent tsunami without interference from clashes between GAM guerrillas and the Indonesian armed forces.
      The Indonesian government delegation is believed to contain ten members, three of whom are government ministers. The group is headed by Security Minister Widodo Adi Sutjipto. The Indonesian Minister for Foreign Affairs opted out of the delegation, and was replaced by the country's Minister of Justice.
     
GAM, which has been fighting for an independent Aceh since 1976, is represented by a government-in-exile based in Sweden.
      Leading the GAM negotiating team is the movement's "prime minister" Malik Mahmud.
      Actual discussions between the two sides are expected to begin today, Friday.
     
"Ahtisaari's group is the best possible mediator for something like this", commented researcher Timo Kivimäki of the Copenhagen-based Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS).
      "First of all, they are from a small country, and second, Ahtisaari is independent: he is no longer president, but he has the prestige of a president."
      "The average Indonesian thinks that the West is on a mission against the Muslim countries, and wants to split them apart", Kivimäki adds. "Here we need to make a distinction between the President [Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono] and the Vice President [Jusuf Kalla]. The Vice President is clearly pandering toward those who feel this way."
      Kivimäki also feels that the rebel government that arrived in Helsinki from Stockholm is the right one to have at the negotiating table, as it is the one that is involved in fighting.
      "GAM is surprisingly disciplined", Kivimäki says. He notes that in addition to being led from Sweden, the group refrains from perpetrating terror attacks outside Aceh.
     
A peace agreement reached in Aceh two years ago collapsed when the army launched an attack in 2003. According to Kivimäki, the possibilities for a peace agreement are better now, because the commander of the forces deployed in Aceh is part of the negotiating team.
      "At the beginning of the delivery of the tsunami aid, the President said that international forces are welcome in the area", Kivimäki explains. "However, regional commanders said No. Therefore, it took two days before a single foreigner arrived in Aceh."
      Indonesia's military has strong political power, and Kivimäki notes that the crisis in Aceh is also a business matter.
      "One often sees statistics, according to which only 30% of the funding of the army and police would come from public sources. I studied the matter last autumn for the EU and concluded that it is an exaggeration to say that so much would come from public sources", Kivimäki says.
     
Timo Kivimäki does not believe that Aceh will become fully independent, because the independence of the province does not have the recognition that East Timor had.
      "The tsunami also showed that Aceh is clearly a part of Indonesia", says Kivimäki, who was in Indonesia at the time of the disaster. "Ordinary people organised fund raising efforts immediately, and the amount of solidarity that was shown was quite surprising."
      Kivimäki's solution to the situation is simply one of good administration, where the police, and not the military, are responsible for law and order. He feels that Indonesia is going in that direction. He also says that a sufficient number of police officers should be from the local population.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Indonesia to send high-level delegation to Helsinki talks (26.1.2005)
  Aceh rebels hope Helsinki talks will lead to cease fire (25.1.2005)
  Preliminary Indonesian peace talks to begin in Helsinki (24.1.2005)

Links:
  Crisis Management Initiative

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