HELSINKI, July 17: Indonesia and Aceh rebels will sign a truce on Aug 15 after agreeing on Sunday a formula for ending the 30-year-old conflict that has cost 12,000 lives in the province devastated by last December’s tsunami.

Indonesian government negotiators and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) said in a statement at the end of talks in Helsinki that they had “initialled the memorandum of understanding and agreed the formal signing will take place in Helsinki on August 15.”

The devoutly Muslim province of four million people on the northern tip of the island of Sumatra has a long history of revolt against Jakarta and Dutch colonial rule.

It has rich deposits of natural gas, but exploiting them has been hampered by continuing violence.

“It is a historic moment, we finally reach a peaceful settlement that has been longed for so many years by the people of Aceh and by the people of Indonesia,” Indonesian Information Minister Sofyan Djalil told Reuters earlier on Sunday.

“Society can live peacefully and we can rebuild Aceh after it has been destroyed by the tsunami,” he said.

In Aceh itself there was little patience with the political details of the talks among people who lost their loved ones, homes and livelihoods in the tsunami.

“I don’t know anything about negotiations. What I want is just peace in which I can work and my children can grow,” said Jamaluddin, who builds wells in the local capital Banda Aceh.

“I have lost four of my eight children. I have to work from morning to late at night. I don’t have time to support any side,” he said.

The wave that left 170,000 Indonesians dead or missing prompted both sides to return to negotiations that had collapsed in 2003.—Reuters