16.06.2003
By MARY-LOUISE O'CALLAGHAN in Bougainville
New Zealand and Australia are establishing a new international presence on Bougainville to ease the island through the final delicate stages of the peace process.
The Bougainville transition team will replace unarmed regional peace monitors who are being withdrawn from the troubled Papua New Guinea territory at the end of this month.
The monitors have been in Bougainville for the past five years.
The new team's formation follows pressure from the Papua New Guinea Government, the authorities on Bougainville and former militants for a continued international presence.
It comes just days after the New Zealand and Australian Governments agreed to provide armed intervention in neighbouring Solomon Islands.
The President of the Bougainville People's Congress, Joseph Kabui, said the island's leaders, former fighters and ordinary people had been concerned about the vacuum likely to be created by the departure of the peace monitoring group.
"We did not want to see our major facilitators in the peace process leaving without the whole Bougainville peace process coming to its final conclusion," Mr Kabui said.
"It's like taking a gamble in the way it's been done here. But we cannot gamble with people's lives."
Foreign Minister Phil Goff, who with his Australian counterpart, Alexander Downer, has been resisting an extension of the peace monitoring group's term, said it was important for the deadline for various milestones in the peace process to be maintained.
"We're very keen that that deadline should remain in place," Mr Goff said.
"It provides an incentive for the tasks that need to be fulfilled to be fulfilled by that time."
He urged all parties to continue with the process of weapons disposal.
A constitution for an autonomous Bougainville has been drafted and is being considered by the Papua New Guinea Government. But progress towards elections depends on United Nations verification of weapons disposal.
The transition team, mainly made up of the civilian component of the existing peace monitor group, is unlikely to number more than 20.
It is expected to cost less than half the present arrangements, which are funded and supported logistically by the Australian Army.
The new team will retain access to helicopter transport and will be able to support the the small UN observer mission now overseeing weapons disposal on the island.
Australia's and New Zealand's regional partners in the peace monitoring group, Fiji and Vanuatu, are expected to contribute members to the transition team.
|
Post Courier