The Australian
Thursday, January 6, 2005
Editorial
A Quiet Word on Aceh Is in Order
IN assisting Indonesia after the tsunami disaster it
is essential that
Australians acknowledge that they are there to help,
not lead, the recovery effort.
For Indonesian officialdom and opinion-makers to
decide the Australian
Government was sticking its bib into their country's
internal affairs would erode
all the goodwill the aid effort can create. But the
need to respect national
sensitivities cuts both ways. The Indonesian
Government needs to understand that
for its army to continue operations against insurgents
in the stricken
Sumatran province of Aceh would make it hard for the
Australian Government to justify
at home the massive aid effort now under way.
Certainly a ceasefire is
supposed to be in place between the Achenese rebels
and the army but both sides
accuse the other of abusing it. And it seems nowhere
near all the Indonesian
troops in the province are committed to the aid
program. But with something like
90,000 people dead in Aceh, and many more homeless,
all of the army should be
working to speed the recovery. For the Indonesian
military to focus on the
rebels while the foreigners do the heavy humanitarian
lifting sends the worse
possible signal at the worse possible time. Even in
Sri Lanka, where the Tamil
Tigers challenge the authority of the national
Government, troops from both sides
are managing to work together.
Certainly, Jakarta's sensitivities over Aceh, where
there has been fighting
for almost 30 years, are entirely understandable. The
loss of East Timor
following foreign, especially Australian,
intervention, still rankles, and the idea
of buckling to another secessionist movement is
unacceptable in Indonesia.
While President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has talked of
granting oil-rich Aceh
special autonomy, his Government has made it clear
that foreign peace plans are
not welcome. And whatever the merits of the Free Aceh
movement, the Australian
Government has no option but to accept that this is an
Indonesian issue we
should stay out of. The secession of a region in
Sumatra such as Aceh would only
encourage other rebellions and it is in Australia's
long-term national
interest for Indonesia to be a stable democracy, where
the writ of the central
Government is respected across all of the archipelago.
But this does not mean John
Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer cannot
have a quiet word with Dr
Yudhoyono, explaining the reasons why there must be
peace in Aceh. As a friend,
Australia has no authority to direct but every right
to advise. And
tomorrow's aid summit in Jakarta gives them an
excellent opportunity to do so.
-----------------------------------------
The Australian
Thursday, January 6, 2005
Howard 'Concerned' About Aceh Fighting
By Samantha Maiden
JOHN Howard yesterday said Australia would be
"concerned" if the Indonesian
military were still fighting separatist rebels in the
hills above Aceh's
disaster zone.
However, the Prime Minister said Australia would not
force Indonesia's hand
by attaching any demand to military aid and
assistance.
The Australian yesterday revealed there were still gun
battles taking place
in the troubled region of Indonesia.
Separatist rebels in Aceh yesterday denied Indonesian
military claims they
had attacked humanitarian relief convoys, and accused
the Yudhoyono Government
of launching attacks.
While security remained an issue for Australian
personnel, Mr Howard said
Australia would attach no conditions to the aid
package. "It's not dependent at
all. The only issue that might give rise to is an
issue of security of our
personnel, but we're not in any way attaching
conditions to the aid we're
providing," he said.
"We have a single mission and that is to provide
assistance, to get it
through in the most practical way possible.
"There are mixed reports (on Aceh security). Obviously
anybody would be
concerned if hostilities continue."
Mr Howard said Australia's efforts, such as sending a
water purification
plant to Aceh, had considerably helped ease the
suffering of survivors.
An unofficial ceasefire is understood to be in place
in Aceh between the
Indonesian military and rebels, however some military
activity is continuing in
the hills.
"We deny the accusations made by the high-ranking
Indonesian military
officers that the National Army of Aceh is attacking
or hindering convoys of
logistics for the victims of the disaster," Teungku
Darwis Jeunib said.
Jeunib, a district commander in Aceh, said rebels on
the ground were sticking
to an order from their exiled leadership in Sweden for
a unilateral ceasefire
to allow relief efforts to proceed smoothly.
He said the rebels were deeply affected by the tsunami
disaster and had lost
many relatives, and they welcomed the international
help. Jeunib said any
clashes that had erupted between the Free Aceh
Movement (GAM) rebels and
government forces were a result of the Indonesian
military attacking first.
GAM has been fighting for independence since 1976, and
the government stepped
up its military suppression efforts with a massive
operation that began in
May 2003.
Indonesian military chief General Endriartono Sutarto
called early last week
for a temporary ceasefire so relief efforts could be
pursued. President Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono followed up Sutarto's comments by
urging the rebels last
Thursday to lay down their weapons and join efforts to
rebuild Aceh.
But the military admitted on Friday it was continuing
its military offensive.
On Sunday, the military said it had killed three
rebels, claiming they died
after trying to ambush a convoy of military trucks
carrying relief supplies.
In Indonesia, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said
practical assistance was
needed to help rebuild vital infrastructure.
"Let me give you an example," he said. "The road down
the west coast of Aceh
has been destroyed and it can't be repaired because in
some areas the
topography has been changed -- where there was a road
there is now a sea."
Additional reporting: AFP
------------------------------------------
U.N. Warns Against Fighting, Tsunami Pledges Rise
By Irwin Arieff
UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 6 (Reuters) - Governments and
rebels in Sumatra, Sri
Lanka and Somalia must keep the peace or risk a
cut-off in tsunami aid, the
United Nations said on Wednesday, as Australia and
Germany pledged more than $1.4
billion in disaster assistance.
"We have a message to the parties to the conflicts:
Suspend your conflict and
work together with us to help your own people," a
senior U.N. official said.
There was now peace in Sumatra's Aceh province, a
cease-fire where Tamil
Tigers had been active in Sri Lanka, and warlords were
not fighting in much of
Somalia, U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland
told reporters.
But he added: "We need that cease-fire, that peace, to
hold because if new
conflict breaks out, we cannot help the people."
Germany and Australia pushed the amount so far
promised by donors worldwide
to nearly $3.7 billion with pledges of $680 million
and $765 million,
respectively.
The United Nations wants major donors to set aside
nearly $1 billion in
emergency aid over the next six months to provide
basic needs for tsunami victims,
U.N. officials said.
The appeal, to be launched by Secretary-General Kofi
Annan at a donor
conference in Jakarta on Thursday, is aimed at getting
commitments for specific aid
needs, much of it from money already promised and
perhaps new contributions.
Annan urged donor nations to make good on their
pledges, which have not yet
all been handed over.
"I hope all the money will be delivered," Annan said
in a television
interview.
At the one-day conference, leaders from 26 nations and
humanitarian groups
will discuss ways to coordinate donations and relief
operations and also ways of
limiting damage from future natural disasters.
The sheer number of aid groups flooding into Asia has
caused coordination
problems and created bottlenecks.
HUMANITARIAN CRISIS
Aid promised for the biggest humanitarian crisis since
World War II, in which
150,000 people have been killed and millions left
homeless, must be "fresh
and additional money, not robbing Peter to pay Paul,
pulling it from other
crises," Annan said.
The International Monetary Fund said it was ready to
lend $1 billion to
countries devastated by the tsunami. The funds could
be made available under an
existing IMF facility for countries hurt by natural
disasters.
Diplomats said the United States will dismantle a
four-nation group it set up
to handle tsunami assistance and let the United
Nations continue as the chief
aid coordinator.
The "core group" -- the United States, Japan, India
and Australia -- was
announced by President Bush last Wednesday as he tried
to dispel criticism that
his initial reaction to the disaster had been too
slow.
American officials now believe the group has served
its purpose. Other
diplomats said there was concern that if the huge
relief effort breaks down, the
United States would prefer not to be in the lead role.
Australia's $765 million pledge over five years for
Indonesian reconstruction
and development was its "single largest aid
contribution ever made," Prime
Minister John Howard said after meeting Indonesian
President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono ahead of the aid conference.
Indonesia is the worst-hit nation with almost
two-thirds of the dead from the
Dec. 26 tsunami, which swept across six Asian
countries.
The European Union warned against nations trying to
outbid each other in a
"beauty contest," without being sure the money would
be well spent.
The EU would link aid to needs and "it's not really
important to make
competition to know who will promise the highest
level," said European Commissioner
for Development and Humanitarian Assistance Louis
Michel.
International groups echoed Annan's concern that aid
was being shifted from
other areas to cover the tsunami.
"We must ensure we don't repeat mistakes of previous
humanitarian crises in
Afghanistan, Liberia, and elsewhere where donors have
either failed to deliver
the aid quickly enough, or at all, or delivered aid at
the expense of other
disasters," said Barbara Stocking, director of Oxfam.
TSUNAMI CONFERENCE
Indonesia hopes the Jakarta conference will agree on
an Indian Ocean tsunami
warning system, which experts say could have saved
many lives. The Pacific
Ocean has a tsunami warning center.
The conference will also discuss the possibility of an
immediate freeze of
debt payments by affected countries.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder felt the Group of
Seven industrialized
nations would agree on debt relief for Sri Lanka and
Indonesia.
Other G7 members Japan, Britain, the United States,
Canada and France support
debt relief, which will be discussed in Jakarta. A
draft joint declaration
for the summit welcomed suggestions for debt relief
for countries affected by
the disaster.
Secretary of State Colin Powell and Bush's brother
Jeb, the governor of
Florida, flew over the devastation on the Indonesian
island of Sumatra and pledged
American support for reconstruction.
The United States has promised $350 million in aid and
deployed navy ships
and military aircraft to help.
Bush announced he was making a personal donation of
$10,000 and his father,
former President Bush, appealed to residents of
Houston, Texas to give $100
million toward relief efforts before month's end.
------------------------------------------
The Straits Times
Thursday, January 6, 2005
Editorial
The Wasteland That Is Aceh
LOCAL and world media have been reporting all week how
nearly complete the
tsunami devastation suffered by Indonesia's Aceh
province has been. Television
shots of the capital Banda Aceh and Meulaboh, a town
of 40,000 inhabitants,
convey some sense of the flattened-out damage. But the
experience of a Singapore
Armed Forces naval team building a beachhead for
relief work comes closest to
one's understanding of literally the earth-shattering
impact of the Dec 26
undersea quake. The SAF team reported that the
shoreline of north-west Sumatra
had moved, in places by a few hundred metres. This
confirms the United States
Geological Survey's reading of a changed topography
wrought by the violent
collision of tectonic plates beneath the Earth's
crust. It calculated the energy
release as equal to 23,000 Hiroshima nuclear bombs.
For illustration, the judder
caused the planet to wobble on its axis. Whether
Indonesia lost some of its
land mass to the ocean waves, had some of the Sumatran
coast moved a small
distance by force of nature, or will one day gain some
islands pushed up by the
puckering of the ocean floor, is for now an academic
curiosity.
What laymen need comprehend is that a part of Sumatra
may have died
permanently. This seems to be the finding of the
Indonesian Red Crescent, which
reported that several Aceh districts had vanished.
Banda Aceh had a population of
400,000. Along the damaged west coast lived two
million more people in fishing
communities, out of Aceh's 4.3 million population. It
is a shuddering thought if
only a percentage of them perished. Indonesia may have
to activate its
population-shift transmigration policy if coastal
settlements of flimsy housing are
to be discouraged in the rebuilding programme. Some
parts may be unsafe for
habitation. In the face of such annihilation,
reconstruction has to be the sole
concern of today's Jakarta tsunami aid conference. Aid
should not be tied to
political trade-offs, so any attempt to slip onto the
agenda the Aceh or Tamil
Tiger separatist issues should be hammered down. It
would be indecent.
Government leaders from outside South-east Asia
attending the conference should also
be invited to take a walk among the dead in the Aceh
wasteland. It will change
attitudes. A typical under-estimation is ascribed to
the US representative,
Secretary of State Colin Powell, who has implied an
aid formula along the lines
of Europe's post-war reconstruction is excessive.
=====
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