The EU’s emerging new role in crisis management and prevention has been active in seeking to resolve one of Asia’s most stubborn conflicts and could be widened further to involve a major mission should talks between the Indonesian Government and Achenese rebels produce a settlement as early as in July.

With a new round of talks scheduled for July 12 in Finland between representatives of the Indonesian Government and the Free Aceh Movement known as GAM, EU policymakers were reported to have received briefings and begun considering plans for possible deployment of a unarmed EU mission of around 200 to the troubled province. These could include military as well as police and civilian experts in such mission. It could also take place in a wider international presence that revolved around ASEAN or some member countries.

The EU Council of Ministers was also to consider sending a smaller preliminary assessment mission to Indonesia in June at the invitation of the Government in Jakarta, according to Indonesia sources.

Representatives of the EU joined the talks during the May round in Finland as an indication of the growing EU participation in the peace process. The EU has in recent years been actively involved in other aspects of Indonesian political, economic and social developments and funded numerous projects, which also included a large presence during all phases of the country’s national elections in 2004. The peace negotiations, conducted with the assistance of non-governmental organisations such as the Swiss-based Henry Dunant Centre in the past and more recently the Crisis Management Initiative in Finland have received substantial EU Commission financial backing.

Peace talks appear to have accelerated in pace and prospects in recent weeks in a renewed effort by the elected Government of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and the GAM in the aftermath of the Tsunami which devastated the war-torn province on December 29 and killed as many as some 230,000. He suspended the state of emergency in the province imposed more than a year earlier and opened new talks with the GAM. He said in Tokyo on June 2 that the “talks are moving well” and that he was optimistic the 30-year conflict which has been estimated to have cost some 12,000 lives might be resolved. Previous cease-fires and talks have all broken down and one source with the non-official Finnish Crisis Management Initiative said optimism had to be “realistic” in view of past failures. Yudhoyono said he was setting “no time line” for the talks, “but we have to accelerate the process. Sooner is better.”

The talks in Finland, headed by former Finnish President Marti Ahtisaari, are not strictly about independence since the Indonesian Government has consistently rejected such an option. They have focused on greater autonomy or self-rule for the province and other modes of decentralisation, including relating to the area’s oil resources, which in the past have been a mainstay of the Central Government and the Indonesian military that controlled the province.

The proposed EU role and mission would be unusual and not fit into the general pattern of previous such EU undertaking in peacekeeping, enforcement or stabilisation in Southeastern Europe or Africa. It would be the first in a number of years in Asia since an involvement in the Cambodian peace process and its biggest test in the region since its embarking on a more structured Foreign and Security Policy.

The sensitivity and risk of such an engagement would be underlined by the history of violence and lawlessness that required broad international intervention in the region following the plebiscite on independence in East Timor when Indonesian militias went on a bloody rampage in that former Indonesian Province.

The Indonesian Government and President have voiced its unease or outright opposition concerning a possible international role in any Acehnese settlement. But sources noted that the objection had focused on the UN and that the Indonesian President had himself proposed a role for regional organisations. But some sources also suggest divisions within Indonesia regarding policy toward the talks and dealing with rebels, possibly reflecting splits between civilian and military approaches.

A major constant in Indonesian policy in recent years has been to preserve the vast country’s territorial integrity following the secession of East Timor and continued tensions and separatist clashes in other parts of the country.

Any such international involvement has to some degree been complicated by the tensions witnessed in the follow-up to dispense and deploy the international aid effort in the province following the Tsunami disaster. Then Indonesian authorities sought to set a time limit for an international aid presence.

And a settlement and its terms remained problematic in view of continued verbal and physical animosity between rebel and Indonesian military TNI forces. The latest rhetorical skirmish erupted in early June when Indonesian Army chief General Sutarto declared that a peace accord negotiated with the exiled faction of the GAM might not necessarily be implemented by rebel forces on the ground. Rebel spokesmen quickly retorted that the military was seeking to sabotage any prospects of a settlement as it would be likely to in the field itself if a settlement were to be concluded.