"We are committed to the peace agreement. But the implementation will be tough. Hostilities on the ground have not stopped," GAM's Sweden-based information officer Bakhtiar Abdullah told AFP.

Bakhtiar is in Malaysia to brief some 200 members of Aceh's civil society groups on the peace pact and to gather input ahead of local elections planned for 2009.

"Some of the participants told me today that the military was still carrying out military operations and intimidating the locals. This has to stop in the spirit of the memorandum of understanding," he said.

Bakhtiar said that on GAM's part, the chain of command was intact and it would adhere to the peace process and lay down arms.

But the challenging part would be for Indonesian soldiers to stop operations against GAM members, he said.

"We hope it will be a sustainable peace treaty. But we are cautiouly optimistic. If you (Indonesia) want to talk about peace, there should not be any military operations," he said.

"You cannot have military presence everywhere and talk about peace. This will only create fear among the people."

Bakhtiar said GAM was concerned that some militia groups may attempt to derail the peace pact.

"The threat is always there. We have identified some of the groups. We are afraid what happen in East Timor may happen again," he said..

"But the involvement of the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as monitoring teams in Aceh could prevent any attempts to sabotage the peace."

Previous truces have broken down and there are fears that this time too some diehard rebels and troops will be reluctant to end the violence.

Bakhtiar said up to 200 European Union monitors under the Aceh Monitoring Mission would arrive in Aceh after August 15.

Among their main objectives is to monitor the demobilisation of GAM and decommissioning of its armaments, and observe the relocation of police and troops.

According to a draft copy of the Helsinki agreement obtained by AFP, GAM's decommissioning would begin on September 15, 2005, be executed in four stages and end by December 31, 2005.

Bakhtiar said local elections would be held in 2006 and national elections in 2009.

"We are now moving away from the bullets to the ballot box. We hope Indonesia will demonstrate its commitment by pulling out its troops from Aceh and free some 300 political prisoners," he said.

The pact, to be signed on August 15 in the Finnish capital Helsinki, will end 29 years of fighting between troops and rebels which has claimed 15,000 lives since 1976.

Aceh bore the brunt of the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster, with more than 131,000 people believed to have perished.