real issues?

The Forum

What about the real issues?

By Martin Tiffany

“WON’T YOU take me to funky town,” sang the band. Solomon Mamaloni smiled and twisted the night away.

Mamamloni, the Solomon Islands prime minister, had every reason to be happy and celebrate. The 23rd South Pacific Forum meeting had ended that after noon in his country and he felt he had done a good job as chairman. That night he invited the heads of the regional governments, their delegations, the hun dred or so journalists, prominent Honi ara businessmen, his friends and anyone who was someone to an island feast.

Official functions in Honiara usually end at a respectable hour. This one went on until well after midnight.“ Three happy c aeers for Solomon Mamaloni,” yelled ti e master of ceremonies. This cordial, or p< rhaps that should read ‘nice’, tone the tone of the Forum.

A Forum which did wonders for Mamaloni whose credibility as a regional leader had been questioned because of his non-attendance at last year’s Forum and other regional meetings.

Last month’s Forum discussed ‘nice’ issues like the environment, economic and trade concerns, the state of Pacific children, and how the bigger Forum countries could help their smaller neigh bours.

While these are laudable issues and important for the region, one of the

biggest problems facing the region was

neatly side-stepped. Bougainville, the

island which wants to break away from Papua New Guinea, never even rated a mention.

Forum members accept PNG’s arguement that it is trying to quell a small band of secessionists (Bougainville Revolutionary Army) and therefore is an internal matter. If it is so clear-cut, why has the conflict dragged on for four years? If it is such a minority of the island’s 160,00 people who are against PNG, how come the PNG forces had to flee the island and resort to attacks by

helicopter?

PNG has stopped any supplies reach ing Bougainville no food, no medicine, no clothes. Innocent children and adults die as a result and yet not one Forum country had the courage to ask what was

happening. Perhaps frightened of being

ostracized from their little club. The situation is still an internal matter despite PNG defence force soldiers crossing the boarder into Solomon Islands territory to cause destruction and to harass Solomon Islanders.

Solomon Islands minister of police and justice, Albert Laore, made calls before the Forum meeting for Bougainville to be on the agenda in order to find a lasting peace for the whole of the South Pacific region. But the 15 Forum countries did not think it worth bringing uo at their

meeting.

Instead they produced a communique after their two-day meeting which con sidered nine issues they had discussed • follow-up to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED); • economic and trade concerns; • the special needs of the smaller island states; • the importance of enhancing link ages with the broader Asia-Pacific Re gion; • a Declaration on Law Enforcement

Co-operation;

• the Niue Treaty on Fisheries Surveillance and Law Enforcement; • the region’s concerns on nuclear testing and hazardous materials;

• indigenous peoples; and

• the state of Pacific children.

The meeting also agreed that a mechanism for consultation between Taiwan and individual Forum countries should be proposed. The decision to participate in such consultation would be entirely up to the Forum countries and it was stressed that those who did take part would not be doing so as represen tatives of the Forum. The Forum meet ing said the importance of Taiwan/ Republic of China as an “economic presence in the region justified some form of formal consultative arrangement with those Forum countries which wished to participate.”

The post-Forum dialogue takes place each year, after the annual Forum meeting, between representatives of the Forum and representatives of the seven post-Forum dialogue partners Can ada, the Peoples’ Republic of China, the

European Community, France, Japan,

the United Kingdom and the United States of America. n

The Forum; a line-up of the dignitaries who attended this year’s South Pacific Forum meeting in Honiara.