Below is a transcript from The World Today, a program which was broadcast around Australia on Tuesday, 25 July, 2006 on ABC Local Radio.


ELEANOR HALL: Nearly a year after the Indonesian Government signed a peace agreement with the Guerrilla movement fighting for an independent Aceh, the treaty could be in jeopardy.
The Free Aceh Movement, or GAM, says a law Jakarta passed to deliver autonomy to Aceh doesn't honour key clauses in the peace agreement. And GAM leaders have accused the Indonesian Government of trying to keep Aceh's oil resources out of Acehnese hands, and of breaking promises on the presence in the province, of Indonesian soldiers. Deakin University's Damien Kingsbury who worked with GAM in clinching the original peace deal spoke to Jennifer Macey before flying to Kuala Lumpur for emergency talks aimed at rescuing the treaty.

DAMIEN KINGSBURY: Well, there's actually a large range of problems with it. It's primarily around modifications to the arrangement in ways that undermine it, undermine the autonomy of a future government in Aceh, undermine limitations on the role of the military in Aceh, undermine issues around human rights trials, and the economic autonomy of the province.

So the problem is not so much that it increases Jakarta's control over Aceh - it probably still lessens it somewhat, but it doesn't go nearly far enough towards honouring the peace agreement. It doesn't go nearly far enough towards establishing the type of autonomy that was seen as the prerequisite for maintaining peace in Aceh.

JENNIFER MACEY: There seems to be some concern that the Acehnese provincial government has actually less control over the oil and gas reserves in the province. Is that the case?

DAMIEN KINGSBURY: Well, in theory under the legislation, the local government will retain 70 per cent of income. The problem has always been who had control over the income and how it was allocated.
Now, if the government in Aceh had control, then they would ensure that they did in fact receive 70 per cent. If the Government in Jakarta has control, then what they might get is 70 per cent of whatever's left over after all other costs and expenses have been taken out. And as we saw up until very recently, that essentially makes 70 per cent of nothing.

JENNIFER MACEY: And how do the changes to the legislation affect the role of the Indonesian military in the province?

DAMIEN KINGSBURY: Well, the agreement specified that the military would only be present in Aceh for the purposes of external defence, and that all internal matters would be handled by the police.

The legislation, however, refers to the Army being present in Aceh for the purposes of state security. Now, that could be understood as external difference, but it could also be understood as having an internal function as well. That's not just ambiguity, that really is the problem, which has also been at the heart of the Aceh conflict, and I have to say, at the heart of the lack of trust that's existed between Aceh and Jakarta for so many years. It's these types of betrayals, I think, that really have hardened the Acehnese against Jakarta, and by passing the legislation in a way which compromises the agreement so profoundly, many Acehnese are now thinking, well, why did we bother entering into an agreement? It's only concerned that we can't trust the politicians in Jakarta.

JENNIFER MACEY: So does this mean it's back to the drawing board?
DAMIEN KINGSBURY: Well, we're not quite back to the drawing board yet. What's going to happen is that there'll be a meeting of a number of Acehnese in the next few days, and they will hope to come up with proposals to put back to the Indonesian Government and to the crisis management initiative, which brokered the peace agreement, and to the European Union, which is the guarantor of the peace agreement, in a bid to try to rescue the agreement, I guess. That's probably what we're looking at now. If the Indonesian Government is prepared to make the changes to the existing legislation, then I think we can work our way through this, but if they're not prepared to make changes to the legislation, then I think we're going to have some very serious problems ahead.

ELEANOR HALL: And that's Associate Professor Damien Kingsbury from Deakin University, who brokered the original peace deal with GAM. He was speaking there to The World Today's Jennifer Macey.