EU hopeful Indonesia will pass Aceh bill soon

JAKARTA, Apr 23 (Reuters) Indonesia could pass a bill on governing the volatile province of Aceh by the end of the summer, a top European Union official said today, paving the way for elections in the region.

The Indonesian parliament missed a March 31 deadline for the bill that would cement a peace deal last August between Jakarta and the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM).

The peace agreement ended decades of conflict in which some 15,000 people died.

''I got the impression from the government that they don't see any basic difficulties in parliament ... Parliament is is recess but people continue to work on the law,'' said EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who wraps up a three-day visit to Indonesia today.

''It could be by the end of the summer,'' he said when asked when he expected the bill to be passed, adding that the EU would ''accompany the process until the end''.

Lawmakers say delays were necessary to defuse nationalistic fears the bill would be a gateway for resource-rich Aceh to split from Indonesia, but debates on the draft's wide-ranging content are still under way without a clear date for an up or down vote.

Finland, where the deal was signed, and other EU nations have been key in ensuring the truce was reached and maintained, including leading a mission to monitor implementation on the ground.

During his visit to Indonesia, Solana has held meetings with government officials and leaders of the Aceh rebel group GAM, who returned to Aceh this month after decades abroad to help implement the peace deal signed last year.

Solana said he was happy with the progress of peace in tsunami-ravaged Aceh and GAM leaders were optimistic about the political process and the prospects of elections in the region.

The Helsinki truce ending three decades of war between Indonesian security forces and GAM came after the latter dropped their insistence on an independent Aceh.

One of the concessions in exchange called for Indonesia to pass laws giving Aceh control of most of its affairs and former GAM rebels a chance to form a local political party to contest in direct elections.

According to the peace deal, the bill would have regulated Aceh's first direct gubernatorial elections in April 2006 but involved parties agreed to move the elections to June instead.

EU monitors are supposed to stay until the end of the polls.

GAM and Indonesia's government signed the peace deal after months of negotiations spurred by the December 2004 tsunami that left around 170,000 Acehnese dead or missing.

REUTERS CH RK1158