By Norm Dixon
According to political commentator Laurie Oakes, writing in the March 4 Bulletin, the Australian government was given detailed information about the PNG government's plot to use mercenaries against the people of Bougainville last October, and Australia's secret police probably knew even earlier.
Oakes claims former Australian army advisers to the PNG Defence Force are actively involved with the operation. This makes a mockery of foreign minister Alexander Downer's feigned shock at the plan.
The Australian revealed on February 22 that the PNG government had hired up to 150 mercenaries to launch "surgical strikes" to assassinate leaders of the Bougainville Interim Government (BIG) and Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) in the rebel stronghold of central Bougainville, and release five PNG Defence Force soldiers being held as prisoners of war by the BRA in southern Bougainville.
The mercenaries have been supplied by a British subsidiary of Executive Outcomes, a South African-based company which specialises in supplying soldiers and equipment to fight wars in mineral-rich Third World countries.
Executive Outcomes has extensive links with the armed forces of the former apartheid regime and the notorious "Third Force" which unleashed racist, random violence prior to the 1994 South African elections.
An advance force of 30 mercenaries is reportedly in Wewak, in northern PNG. Sources told Oakes that the plan involved as many as 150 black African mercenaries being sent into action on Bougainville dressed in PNGDF uniforms, together with elite PNGDF troops trained by Executive Outcomes.
If mercenaries were killed, they would be given PNG names to make it look as if only PNG troops were involved. Their mission was to "liquidate" anyone remotely associated with the BRA.
While claiming Canberra supported a negotiated settlement to the conflict, and repeatedly saying that a military solution was not possible, Downer told reporters that Australia was "reluctant" to use the $320 million it gives to Port Moresby each year in aid as a "bargaining chip" to prevent the use of mercenaries.
Between $16 million and $20 million in aid goes directly to the PNGDF, while the rest allows funds to be diverted from the PNG budget to military and police operations. Aid for the PNG police is the biggest single component of Australia's "non-military aid" to PNG.
Port Moresby is paying $36 million for the private army's services out of an account known as the "North Fly Highway Development Fund". Much of the money is rumoured to have been diverted from proceeds of the privatisation of the state mining company, a key part of a World Bank/IMF structural adjustment program which was also backed by the Australian government.
In a statement released on February 23, Francis Ona warned Prime Minister Chan that, should he use "hired killers" on Bougainville, "You are going to lose either way; if you fail in your objectives, you lose; if you win in your objectives, you lose the trust and respect of all Bougainvilleans and peace-loving people. You will go down in history dishonoured by this infamous act, loathed by all moral people of good will ...
"We have fought this war now for that last nine years. The coming of 'mercenaries' is not going to change anything. We are fighting for our social, political, economic, cultural rights and self-determination. Nothing will change our people's resolve, come PNGDF or Executive Outcomes."
The Bougainville Freedom Movement called on the Australian government to halt "aid" to the PNG government. "The Australian government have continued to supply PNG with $320 million, part of which is used to employ foreign hit squads" to reclaim the RTZ-CRA copper mine at Panguna in central Bougainville.
BFM spokesperson Max Watts pointed out the hypocrisy of the Australian government's claimed opposition to a military solution.
"No Australian government has so far shown the least inclination to withdraw Australian pilots from Bougainville, without whom the [Australian-supplied] helicopters, principal weapon of the PNG military, would be useless. Nor has Canberra stated that all 'aid' to PNG, essential for the continuation of the war, will be withdrawn if there is no serious effort to make peace", Watts said.
But in the hypocrisy stakes, the Coalition government comes a poor second to Labor leader Kim Beazley, who stated on February 24: "It is outrageous that the Papua New Guinea government is hiring thugs to murder its own people while receiving military aid assistance from Australia".
In 1989, Beazley, then defence minister in the Hawke government, donated four Iroquois combat helicopters to the PNG government to defeat the BRA. In that same year, Beazley's government provided $54 million in military aid and funded the training of an extra 600 troops for use on Bougainville.
The Labor government also amended legislation, which outlaws the recruitment of Australian citizens for mercenary activities overseas, to make it legal for Australian pilots to fly the Iroquois helicopters. The aircraft and their mercenary pilots were almost immediately involved in massacres and human rights atrocities.
The present government has not repealed the amendment.