Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea Post-Courier\/PINA Nius Online) – Bougainvilleans seeking autonomy and possible independence from Papua New Guinea have demanded an undertaking from the National Government that a promised referendum on independence would be held in five years.<\/p>\n
After almost three years of peace talks, the supposed final round collapsed when the Bougainville delegation walked out on PNG Foreign and Bougainville Affairs Minister Sir Michael Somare and a bipartisan national delegation.<\/p>\n
Sources close to the Bougainvilleans said the walkout was sparked by a statement by Sir Michael that the referendum would not be held for 10 to 15 years.<\/p>\n
Sir Michael made repeated attempts to get the Bougainvilleans back into negotiations.<\/p>\n
But their leaders, led by Bougainville People’s Congress president Joseph Kabui, interim Governor John Momis and Leitana Council of Chiefs leader Joel Banam, presented Sir Michael with an ultimatum.<\/p>\n
The ultimatum demanded that Sir Michael revert to an earlier promise that the referendum would be held in 2006, sources said.<\/p>\n
Mr. Momis a former Catholic priest, Bougainvillean moderate and, like Sir Michael, a founder of PNG’s 1975 independence took the letter to Sir Michael and his delegation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bougainvilleans seeking autonomy and possible independence from Papua New Guinea have demanded an undertaking from the National Government that a promised referendum on independence would be held in five years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54859\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}