Saturday's pull-out was the third of four planned withdrawals under a historic peace pact signed on August 15 in Helsinki between the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and the Indonesian government.

Four battalions and one company left aboard two navy ships from Krueng Geukeuh port in northern Aceh, witnesses said.

Presiding over the redeployment ceremony, Aceh military chief Major General Supiadin A.S. said 5,696 soldiers would be withdrawn from Aceh in the third phase of redeployment, including some leaving next week.

Some 6,000 troops were redeployed from Aceh in September and another 6,000 troops have been pulled out of the province in the past few days as part of phase two of the withdrawal, Soediko said.

The remainder of the 24,000 troops and a large contingent of military police will follow once GAM fulfils its commitment to hand over the second half of its declared 840 weapons in two stages by the end of the year.

Observers see the agreement as the best chance yet of ending the conflict which has claimed about 15,000 lives, most of them civilians, since GAM began its struggle for an independent state in 1976.

Under the accord, GAM dropped its long-held demand for independence in exchange for a form of local government in Aceh, a province of about four million people.

The peace pact was spurred by the December 2004 tsunami disaster, which left 131,000 people dead in Aceh.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.