The rebels need to surrender 39 more weapons to meet the terms of the August pact signed with the government in Helsinki and seen as the best chance yet of ending three decades of bloodshed in Indonesia's westernmost province.

Thursday's handover took place in Blangkejeren, the main town in Aceh's Gayo Lues district, said Juri Laas from the Aceh Monitoring Mission (AMM), a foreign monitoring team mandated to oversee the implementation of the peace pact.

"A total of 51 weapons were handed over and 47 of them were accepted. Four were disqualified," Laas told AFP. Under the pact, former Free Aceh Movement (GAM) fighters are to hand over their declared arsenal of 840 firearms.

"So far we have accepted a total of 801 weapons handed over by the GAM," he said.

As required under the deal, monitors have refused to accept any weapons handed over by the rebels that are not in working condition.

GAM had informed the AMM that the final handover would take place in the Acehnese capital Banda Aceh Saturday, but that the time and venue was as yet unknown, Laas said.

For its part, the government has pulled out three-quarters of its non-local military and police units. Laas added that the government was expected to pull out its final forces on December 20, 27 and 29.

He could not say how many soldiers and police that would involve.

The peace agreement stipulates that by the end of the fourth phase, only 14,700 soldiers and 9,100 police, all locally-recruited, will remain in Aceh.

The separatist conflict had claimed about 15,000 lives, most of them civilians, since GAM began its struggle for an independent state in 1976.

The accord saw GAM drop its demand for independence in exchange for a form of local government in Aceh, a province of more than four million people. The government agreed to grant former fighters amnesties and allow them to start a local political party.

Both sides were pushed to the negotiating table in the wake of last December's tsunami catastrophe, which killed and left missing some 168,000 Indonesians, mostly in Aceh.

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