NZ and Australia to monitor PNG truce

NZ and Australia to monitor PNG truce

CANBERRA (Reuters): Australia and New Zealand said yesterday they would send peacekeepers to the war-torn Papua New Guinea island of Bougainville ahead of peace talks aimed at ending one of the Pacific's longest and bloodiest civil wars.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Don McKinnon said the unarmed Truce Monitoring Group (TMG) would begin arriving on the rugged, jungled island within days, as the warring factions begin fresh peace talks in the Australian resort city of Cairns.

McKinnon's Australian counterpart, Alexander Downer, said Australia would only send civilians to Bougainville to monitor a truce agreed to by the rival factions in the nine-year civil war at talks last month at the Burnham army camp near the New Zealand city of Christchurch.

"It won't be, to make this point clear, some sort of military peacekeeping or peace enforcement body," Downer said.

New Zealand is sending troops but Australian truce monitors will be a mixture of aid workers, public servants and possibly police, Downer said.

PNG government and rebel officials are due to begin fresh talks in Cairns from tomorrow as part of renewed efforts to end the war which has killed thousands of people and severely drained the impoverished South Pacific nation's economy.

The truce monitoring group will include personnel from Fiji, Tonga and Vanuatu, with have a core group of about 150 and a combined civilian and military complement of about 260.

A New Zealand navy frigate and support ship would also be positioned off Bougainville, a resource-rich island 800 kilometers northeast of the Papua New Guinea capital of Port Moresby.

"As a neutral body, the truce monitors will help reduce tension on the island between the different groups, build trust and discourage potential breaches of the Burnham Truce," McKinnon said.