Hope at last for end

Issue

IT is barely two decades ago when Bougainvilleans fought and won what they wanted provincial government.

It was a not-so-perfect system of govern ment but one nonetheless which had given the locals some form of autonomy.

There is mounting pressure to discard the provincial government system be cause critics say it is a waste of money.

A parliamentary committee is reviewing the system. Despite evidence of wide spread misappropriation of public funds,

Bougainville, officially known as North Solomons Province, was perhaps the only provincial government that had never been subjected to systematic criticisms and allegations of misuse of public money.

In some provinces, administration of the system was so bad that the national government in Port Moresby was forced to intervene from time to time by suspending a number of provincial gov ernments over the past 19 years of its

existence. Today, almost two decades on, Bougainville is once again under the spotlight. The island, northeast of Port Moresby, has been wracked by a seccessionist rebellion, which has claimed many lives and caused untold sufferings to its estimated 160,000 inhabitants.

Papua New Guinea today maintains a military presence on Buka Island, at the northern tip of Bougainville, with con stant sea patrols around the island. The rebels, led by Australian-trained bomb expert, Sam Kauona, rule the interior with the old Panguna copper and gold mine serving as their headquarters. Five years after the uprising, there is no apparent end in sight. One thing, however, is changing. The focus in trying to solve the problem on the war-torn island has shifted. PNG, which until now has told its regional neighbours that the trouble on Bougainville was a domestic issue, is enlisting the support of some Forum members to help solve the groblem. Port Moresby’s idea is for a egional Peacekeeping Force (RPF).

With the concept gaining momentum daily, Bougainville is once again on the verge of giving birth, as it were, to something new as it did the provincial government system 19 years Under the RPF proposal being actively dis cussed in the corridors of power through out the region, military personnel to serve on peace-keeping duties on Bou gainville are likely to be drawn from Fiji, Tonga and Vanuatu.

Australia reportedly has given tacit support to the idea when it was raised recently during formal talks in Canberra.

The proponent of the idea was none other than Sir Julius Chan, PNG’s current deputy prime minister and minister for foreign affairs. Since taking up the foreign affairs portfolio following a Christmas/New Year cabinet reshuffle in Port Moresby, Sir Julius twice visited the South Pacific for discussions with each of the 13 island member countries of the South Pacific Forum.

It was during these trips as recent as last May that he reportedly mooted or rather resurrected the idea for a RPF.

The concept was not new. In fact, as then prime minister of PNG, Sir Julius first raised it at the 12th South Pacific Forum in Port Vila, Vanuatu, in 1981.

Then, as now, details of the proposal are still secret. But Sir Julius told his colleagues then that his primary concern was the security of Small Islana States of the Forum, saying his interest in regional peacekeeping emerged from PNG’s “bit ter experience” with the Vanuatu affair.

PNG troops were sent to Vanuatu in 1980 to quell an externally manipulated insurrection which later turned into rebellion on the township of Santo. Sir Julius explained that it would not always be correct to assume that the situation

which confronted Vanuatu would re occur in a similar form. Nonetheless, Sir Julius insisted that “to ignore history would be to commit an error of judge ment which future generations would not forgive”. As he saw it then, the objectives were three-fold • to assist in the preservation of sover eignty and independence of Pacific states through the maintenance of law and order; • to provide a contingency force which would serve as a deterrent; and • a visible demonstration of Pacific solidarity and political will to meet any forms of threat from either internal or external sources.

One of Sir Julius’ arguments was that although the South Pacific was tradition ally peaceful, dissident movements could turn to insurrection and rebellion almost overnight as was the case in Vanuatu in 1980. A RPF could be called in at a moment’s notice to serve in a combat situation such as in Vanuatu. But in peace time, it would be used in other areas such as joint surveillance and fisheries protection, disaster relief and development projects for the smaller island countries. Sir Julius told his colleagues that he did not believe that the peace and stability of the South Pacific should be left to one country. He was also against the idea that Australia and New Zealand should be involved in the internal security matters of small Pacific countries.

“The Pacific peoples themselves must bear the responsibility for Pacific security

operations, and that contingency plan

ning must be undertaken now and not when the trouble erupted,” he was Quoted as saying then. ‘ The security of the region was so important that the Forum must consider the issue,” Sir Julius said. The PNG deputy prime minister had even suggested that in an emergency situation, a special session of the Forum should be called to authorise the use of the force. Fiji has already given guarded support to the idea of a RPF for Bougainville. Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka told a national press club news conference in Port Moresby recently that Fiji was ready to co-operate in establish ing a peace-keeping force. “However, if a peace-keeping force is to be deployed into an area, we would like to be assured that they go in with the full co-operation of the host country ... and after initial negotiations are made between those in conflict,” Mr Rabuka said.

A number of countries including Australia and New Zealand commented on Sir Julius’ initial proposal at the Vanuatu Forum. Tuvalu, for instance, supported the idea for a RPF, saying smaller Forum island countries could no longer look to an administering power to assist them in a crisis situation. □