Bid to avert secession

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33874, 20 June 1975, Page 13

Bid to avert secession

CN.Z. Press Assn — Copyright)

PORT MORESBY, June 19

The Chief Minister (Mr Michael Somare) hopes that the naming of September 16 as Papua New Guinea’s independence day will take the steam out of the Bougainville secession movement.

Mr Somare yesterday) named Bougainville as one of the country’s problems a newly independent Papua New’Guinea could get down and solve immediately. I In his speech to the House

of Assembly before his sudden proposal that] September 16 be independence day Mr Somare made a clear reference to Bougainville when he said that there were certain things that had happened in the last few days which showed the Government’s hands were tied.

He promised that "strength and authority” would come once Papua New Guinea was a truly independent nation. At a press conference afterwards, Mr Somare said that he thought finance was I the main problem facing ) Bougainvilleans. ) “I am still confident the central Government and the i Bougainville Provincial i Assembly can work out its i differences,” he said.

He said that once Bougainville leaders worked out concrete proposals for furi ther government help in capital works and roadmaking, the Government would ) consider them sympathetically. “We haven’t closed our ears to Bougainville.” Observers were last night describing as a "political coup,” Mr Somare’s successful move to spri..g an independence date on the House of Assembly. A leading Bougainvillean politician has suggested that; Bougainville may consider a) union with the Solomon Is-1 lands. ) The Rev. John Momis, the [member for Bougainville regional in the Papua New 'Guinea House of Assembly;

I said yesterday that such a union would allow his people m ore say in how they were governed than they had under the Papua New Guinea central Government.

Father Mfomis told a press conference he was hopeful ithat if Bougainville became independent it would have ! firm and i’riendiy relations ‘with Papua New Guinea. He suggested another possibility for the area was a 'confederation of Bougain- ’ ville, Papua New Guinea and ‘the Solomons. ] Father Momis said secession was necessary from Papua New Guinea if the people of Bougainville were Ito exercise their democratic iright of self-determination.