May 12, 2003	Monday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 9, 1424

BANDA ACEH (Indonesia) May 11: International mediators made last-ditch efforts on Sunday to avert a return to all-out war in Indonesia’s Aceh province as bloodshed continued.

The government has given separatist rebels from the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) till Monday to announce they are shelving their independence demand and are prepared to start disarming.

Fresh troops have been pouring into the province in Sumatra island in recent days in expectation of a military offensive.

David Gorman, local representative of the Henry Dunant Centre (HDC) mediation group, said mediators met GAM representatives in Stockholm on Saturday to try to persuade them to talk to the Jakarta government. GAM’s exiled top leadership is based in Sweden.

The talks yielded “positive” results, Gorman said.

“We are still talking with the government and seeing what type of last-minute achievement can be made. We are doing whatever we can do to avoid a military operation and renewed fighting,” Gorman told AFP.

“The people of Aceh are generally very troubled and concerned about the situation.”

More than 50 truce monitors from Thailand, the Philippines and Norway are still in Aceh, Gorman said.

Whether they leave depends on the results of talks between the HDC and the Indonesian government, Gorman said.

“If we are notified by the government that we should leave, then we will leave. But we are still awaiting the outcome of this last-minute effort.”

As of early evening Sunday, talks between the mediators and Jakarta were still underway, Gorman said.

Rebels meanwhile killed a policeman and critically wounded another, police said Sunday.

The member of the Brimob paramilitary force was killed on Saturday in an ambush in East Aceh, they said. Rebels shot and critically wounded another policeman in North Aceh.

The government says GAM must meet its terms as a precondition for any Joint Council meeting aimed at saving the December 9 peace pact.

GAM has rejected the deadline and says it wants any meeting held in Switzerland. The government insists talks should take place in Indonesia.

The joint council groups top leaders from both sides as well as the mediators.

A lower-level Joint Security Committee (JSC), also grouping the three parties, monitors day-to-day breaches of the pact.

Four of five GAM members on the JSC who had been arrested were released on a guarantee from the JSC and HDC on Sunday, Aceh police spokesman Sayed Husaini said.

However, they are still suspects in bombings in Jakarta and Medan, a city in North Sumatra bordering Aceh, which police have blamed on GAM. The four are also obliged to report to police periodically, Husaini said.

“We have found preliminary evidence that they were involved in bombing cases. We’re looking for further evidence,” he said.

GAM military spokesman Sofyan Dawod said that should a military operation be launched, rebels would attack troops posted at gas plants operated by US-owned energy giant ExxonMobil and other foreign companies.—AFP