Indonesia military starts attack on rebels

2.30pm

UPDATE - Indonesia's military has launched a rocket attack on rebels in Aceh and says it will begin the main assault today, just hours after the president put the province under martial law.

Firdaus Komarno, spokesman for the military in Aceh, declined to give precise details on the rocket attack.

"The main start will be the parachuting in of rapid reaction troops. That will take place this morning (Monday afternoon NZT)," Komarno told Reuters without elaborating.

Just after midnight on Sunday, President Megawati Sukarnoputri gave the go-ahead for war against the rebels after last-ditch peace talks in Tokyo collapsed, leaving a landmark peace pact welcomed by Aceh's four million people in tatters.

In Banda Aceh, there was little sign of martial law as children went to school, shops opened and traffic clogged the city's busy central market.

Tengku Muhammad, 47, said Acehnese felt helpless and prayed that the war would not be long and costly in human life.

"Everyone in Aceh is in fear, I have resigned myself to God," said the trader, wearing an olive green Muslim shirt and sarong as he leaned against a pillar inside the city's grand mosque.

In a decree, Megawati said the refusal of Free Aceh Movement (GAM) rebels to give up their 27-year fight for independence gave her no option but to get tough.

The Tokyo talks were a final effort to rescue a December peace pact, but for GAM Jakarta's ultimatum to accept Indonesian sovereignty over Aceh, which is rich in oil and gas, was always going to be hard to swallow.

In a joint statement the United States, Japan, the European Union and the World Bank bemoaned the failure of the talks.

Megawati has put Aceh military chief Major General Endang Suwarya in charge of the province, on the northern tip of Sumatra. The military has the power to impose a news blackout and curfews, detain people and limit or stop transport into and out of Aceh.


Her decree runs for six months, but can be extended.

GAM has said it is ready to resume one of Asia's longest-running separatist wars that has killed 10,000 people, adding that it would also appeal for United Nations intervention.

Police have already arrested five leading GAM peace negotiators who were staying at a hotel in Banda Aceh, 1,060 miles northwest of Jakarta.

The peace agreement has been beset by bickering and mistrust over the issue of independence, which GAM has long demanded but Indonesia refuses to give. The peace pact did not address this in detail, focusing more on trying to halt the fighting.

The staunchly Muslim province is one of two separatist hot spots in Indonesia. The other is Papua in the far east.

The decree approves "integrated operations" in Aceh. The key plank will be one of Indonesia's biggest offensives since the 1975 East Timor invasion, but also covers humanitarian efforts.

The government has boosted troops and police here from 38,000 to more than 45,000. GAM has an estimated 5,000 fighters.

Despite 27 years of trying, the military has failed to wipe out the rebels. What these often brutal military operations have done, however, is alienate large segments of Aceh's people.

- REUTERS