'Amazingly surprising' progress made at Aceh peace talks

HELSINKI (AFP): Aceh separatists on Wednesday said "amazingly surprising" advances had been made so far in peace talks with Indonesian officials amid hopes that the two sides will finally agree to end a 30-year conflict that has claimed nearly 15,000 lives.

As a second day of negotiations got underway on Wednesday, delegates said they were pleased that they had already managed to cover all the points in a draft peace treaty, saying they were now prepared to discuss all the suggested changes.

"It's amazingly surprising that we managed to discuss all the issues already yesterday (Tuesday)," Free Aceh Movement (GAM) spokesman Bakhtiar Abdullah told AFP. "Now we can discuss the new draft today."

Maria-Elena Cowell, a spokeswoman for the Crisis Management Initiative (CMI) foundation organizing the talks, confirmed that "a few points have been reformulated" in the draft treaty, but would not say which ones. (**)

The Jakarta Post, 13 July 2005