Security Act

[Headlines

Papua New Guinea

Good relations

agreement signed with Solomons

Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands have signed a six point agreement aimed at restoring good relations between the two countries in the wake of tensions resulting from border incursions by PNG forces. The agreement was signed by the foreign ministers of the two countries, John Kaputin and Francis Saemala, following two days of talks in Port Moresby.

The ministers also announced their support for a Bougain ville peace conference involving the leaders of all sides in the five-year-old conflict. In addition, Kaputin said the Papua New Guinea government had given approval for a European Community monitoring group to make a fact-finding visit to

Bougainville.

Port Moresby has previously withheld permission for visits by foreign missions on the ground that the Bougainville issue was an internal matter.

The six-point agreement confirmed that Papua New Guinea would pay Solomon Islands up to US$3OO,OOO dollars in compensation for cross-border incursions by PNG forces in which several Solomon Islanders were killed. ***

Security Act

challenged

The full bench of the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court has begun hearing a case challenging the constitutional validity of the country’s Internal Security Act. The case has been brought before the Supreme Court by Papua New Guinea’s chief ombudsman, Charles Maine.

PNG’s chief justice, Arnold Amet, has decided that both he and the deputy chief justive, Sir Mari Kapi, should sit on the case along with three other judges from Papua New Guinea’s National Court.

The chief ombudsman is challenging the Internal Security Act on the grounds that he believes it infringes at least 16 individual and civil rights guaranteed by the PNG constitution.

The government may not be mounting much of a defence.

Prime Minister Wingti has already indicated his willingness to amend the Act while his police minister says he’s prepared to go further and repeal it altogether . ***

Bougainville

refusal

An emissary from the Bougainville interim government says the Papua New Guinea foreign minister, John Kaputin, refused to see him on November 6. Mike Forster, who has a brief on behalf of Bougainville officials to help set up a meeting in Australia to setle the Bougainville crisis, said he had been refused a meeting with Kaputin in Canberra because a member of the Bougainville interim government had been seen in a Canberra demonstration on Friday.

The interim government is trying to pursue a peaceful solution to the Bougainville crisis and PNG has suggested it might meet its representatives. But PNG says it will not negotiate until the Bougainville guerrilla army surrenders.

Forster said because the PNG government did not seem to be pushing hard for the Cairns meeting, the interim government would probably be forced to raise the issue of Bougainville independence at the United Nations next year.