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ASEAN countries, EU to send Aceh peace monitors
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-07-27 16:45
Southeast Asian and European countries have agreed to contribute to a peace
monitoring mission in Indonesia's Aceh province, officials said, but a regional
peacekeeping force remains only a distant possibility in Southeast Asia.
AFP reported that Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda said he made a
formal request to colleagues from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) to help monitor a peace deal to be signed August 15 with Aceh separatist
rebels.
He said some nations gave "firm commitments" to supply monitors in
Indonesia's westernmost province, where the rebel GAM movement and the
government are due to sign the deal ending some 30 years of strife.
"So far, countries from ASEAN that we have asked to contribute to the Aceh
peace monitoring mission have expressed their willingness," Wirayuda told AFP,
naming Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Brunei and the Philippines.
He said a meeting to work out the mechanics of the proposed mission would
take place in Jakarta in the second week of August, and that his government
hoped the arrangment would blossom into a regular ASEAN arrangement.
Foreign monitors were first deployed to Aceh under a short-lived ceasefire
agreed in 2002. But a few dozen unarmed monitors from Thailand and the
Philippines were forced to withdraw amid escalating violence.
Malaysia and Brunei have also supplied about 60 military personnel to the
southern Philippines.
Early last year Indonesia proposed that ASEAN set up its own peacekeeping
force as part of the ASEAN Security Community, the 10-nation bloc's general
pledge to live in peace.
But there has been little further talk of the idea. Singapore expressed
reservations, arguing that ASEAN is not a security or defense organization,
while Vietnam was also reportedly cool to the proposal.
Wirayuda acknowledged that some nations had expressed "sensitivities" about
such a move.
Indonesia's foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa said the proposed
multilateral Aceh mission would be a sign of the region's willingness to deal
with such problems.
"It's increasingly becoming the norm that ASEAN countries assist one another
in such an undertaking. It shows that ASEAN is increasingly becoming more mature
in its capacity in dealing with security issues," Natalegawa said.
He said the European Union has also committed to send monitors, the details
of which would be firmed when EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana attends
ASEAN's regional security forum here Thursday.
The monitors would oversee the decommissioning and destruction of weapons
that would be surrendered by GAM, as well as the peaceful withdrawal of the
Indonesian forces from the region, Natalegawa said.
Wirayuda on Wednesday met with New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff in
bilateral talks that also focussed on Aceh.
"I think that it is very important that the EU and the countries in ASEAN
will contribute a monitoring organization as part of confidence building that
will help achieve the outcome that the Indonesian government and negotiators of
GAM are looking forward to," Goff told reporters.
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