Indonesian Govt completes draft bill on Aceh

JAKARTA, Tuesday (AFP) The Indonesian government has finished drafting a contentious autonomy law for Aceh province, where a peace deal with separatist rebels is in an early phase, a report said Tuesday.

The law is expected to generate sharp debate in the capital and its passage is seen as the next major hurdle of the peace process in Aceh, where some 15,000 people, mostly civilians, have died in conflict since 1976. Home Affairs Minister Mohammad Ma'ruf said that the draft law was finalized Sunday and would soon be handed to the state secretariat, which will in turn submit it to parliament for debate, the Kompas daily reported.

Under a peace pact between Jakarta and the rebel Free Aceh Movement (GAM) agreed in Helsinki in August, the draft law, which grants wide-ranging autonomy to the resource-rich province, should come into effect on March 31.

Chapters expected to be strongly debated include those focusing on the creation of local political parties, which are banned elsewhere in Indonesia, and on how to share the spoils from lucrative gas and oil deposits there. The potential for new provinces to split off is another likely topic of contention, lawmakers have said.

Ma'ruf reportedly said that the government was optimistic that elections for the leadership of the staunchly-Muslim province would proceed by July.

Vice President Yusuf Kalla, who met with exiled rebel leaders in Finland last week, has already said that the elections would likely not be held before May or June, instead of April as initially expected.

GAM's self-styled prime minister Malik Mahmud told AFP last week that the delay was "ok because we need a lot of time to prepare."

The implementation of the historic Helsinki accord, signed in the wake of the December 2004 tsunami tragedy, which forced both the government and GAM to reassess their priorities, has so far surpassed expectations.