Members of the Indonesian government and Aceh rebel leaders cut short talks on tsunami relief operations and ways of ending a 30-year conflict in the breakaway region, but Finnish mediators invited them to continue negotiations later.
The two sides met at a secluded manor house north of the Finnish capital, Helsinki, for talks convened by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari.
Ahtisaari did not reveal why the closed-door talks, which had been scheduled to continue yesterday, finished a day early, but said he had invited both parties for a second round of meetings in Helsinki.
Neither party had yet accepted the invitation, Ahtisaari said, adding that he would be "highly disappointed" if they did not return to Helsinki.
Indonesian Communications Minister Sofyan Djalil described the meetings as "quite hopeful" and said that the two sides would meet again soon.
Ahtisaari said no cease-fire agreement had been reached and declined to comment on the stands of the two sides.
In the eastern part of Aceh province, Indonesian troops clashed with rebels, leaving four rebels dead, Lieutenant Colonel Eddyana Sulistiadie, an Indonesian military spokesman said yesterday. Government troops were unhurt, he said.
Sulistiadie identified one of the slain rebels as Amin Syarief, a rebel commander in rural Madat, and said troops confiscated a cache of weapons in the skirmish Saturday. Such small-scale battles are not uncommon.
Ahtisaari said representatives of the Indonesian government approached him in February, followed by more contacts last month before the tsunami disaster with the government and the Free Aceh Movement, locally known as GAM.
Ahtisaari urged both sides to agree quickly on humanitarian aid so that talks could continue on ending the dispute in Aceh province, where rebels have been fighting for independence since 1976.
"It's not an easy thing to start after so many years of distrust that have developed. On the other hand, I don't think we have an enormous amount of time either," Ahtisaari said. "The question is can we be so successful that we can actually ... go much further in our efforts to try to find a comprehensive settlement."
The Indonesian government said that despite the setback it would continue its tsunami aid operations.
"Whatever the result of the meeting in Helsinki, there will be no impact on the emergency relief effort in Aceh," said Budi Atmaji, who is leading the Indonesian government's tsunami relief effort in the province. "The relief operation will continue as usual."
Ahtisaari also appealed to donor countries to give all the aid they had promised to the tsunami-ravaged region.
Several countries, including France, had encouraged Ahtisaari to continue mediation efforts, as well as Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Ahtisaari, 67, a former peacebroker in Kosovo, was Finland's president from 1994-2000 and has held senior UN posts including commissioner for Namibia and undersecretary-general for management and administration. He was special adviser to the UN secretary-general on the former Yugoslavia in 1993.
He likened the Aceh mediation efforts to a fishing trip.
"This sort of process is a little bit like when you go and try to catch salmon. The salmon is such a good fish that it's worthwhile fishing even if you don't get it," he said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS