Peace Agreement and Autonomy
The conflict ended in 1997, after negotiations brokered by New Zealand. A peace agreement finalised in 2000 and disarmament provided for the establishment of an Autonomous Bougainville Government, and for a referendum in the future on whether the island should become politically independent.
Elections for the first Autonomous Government were held in May and June 2005, Joseph Kabui was elected President. He died on 6 June 2008.
On 25 July 2005 rebel leader Francis Ona died after a short illness. A former surveyor with Bougainville Copper Limited, Ona was a key figure in the secessionist conflict and had refused to formally join the island's peace process.
Read more about this topic: Autonomous Region Of Bougainville
Famous quotes containing the words peace, agreement and/or autonomy:
“I sometimes wonder whether, in the still, sleepless hours of the night, the consciences of ... professional gossips do not stalk them. I myself believe in a final reckoning, when we shall be held accountable for our misdeeds. Do they? If so, they have cause to worry over many scoops that brought them a days dubious laurels and perhaps destroyed someones peace forever.”
—Mary Pickford (18931979)
“Truth cannot be defined or tested by agreement with the world; for not only do truths differ for different worlds but the nature of agreement between a world apart from it is notoriously nebulous. Ratherspeaking loosely and without trying to answer either Pilates question or Tarskisa version is to be taken to be true when it offends no unyielding beliefs and none of its own precepts.”
—Nelson Goodman (b. 1906)
“Im tired of earning my own living, paying my own bills, raising my own child. Im tired of the sound of my own voice crying out in the wilderness, raving on about equality and justice and a new social order.... Self-sufficiency is exhausting. Autonomy is lonely. Its so hard to be a feminist if you are a woman.”
—Jane OReilly, U.S. feminist and humorist. The Girl I Left Behind, ch. 7 (1980)