International news in brief

Loyalist cease-fire

Six and a half weeks after the Irish Republican Army laid down its arms and declared a cease-fire the Unionists of Northern Ireland have followed suit.

On October 13, the Combined Loyalist Military Command, which includes the Ulster Volunteer Force, the Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster Freedom Fighters, declared that they would never "again permit our political circumstances to degenerate into bloody warfare" and that "we are on the threshold of a new and exciting peace".

Immediately after the IRA cease-fire was declared, Unionist paramilitaries escalated their violence against the Catholic community with a bomb blast outside the Sinn F‚in office and the murder of a 20-year-old man in Belfast.

In recent years, Loyalist paramilitary groups have been responsible for more deaths then any other force in Irish politics. Since 1969, Loyalist death squads have killed around 900 people.

Peace conference flops

The October 10 Bougainville peace conference never really got under way in the capital, Arawa, after the South Pacific Peace Keeping Forces (SPPKF) failed to secure a safe environment for the participation of Bougainville Revolutionary Army leaders.

One BRA commander, Ismael Toroama, upon entering Arawa was shot at by Papua New Guinea soldiers, apparently escaping uninjured only after returning fire. During the week of the languishing conference further shooting incidents by PNGDF troops were reported.

Equally disturbing were the claims by Bougainville Interim Government chairperson Joseph Kabui that SPPKF troops were "seen to be in their [PNGDF] company and patrolling with them in and around the central Bougainville area".

However, according to Radio Free Bougainville, PNG troops appear to be withdrawing, as per the peace agreement, from near the Panguna copper mine at the centre of the six-year war.

From GLW issue 163