Update: Somare’s Soles 2
Aussie coppers are going back into Papua New Guinea after the Enhanced Cooperation Program was resuscitated today. Apparently there will be no uniformed or plainclothes police on the beat, as there were before the Plan fell over. Federales will be put into key posts, and some more civvys are going over too. But no firefights with raskols, that’s all up to the natives now.
A thought: why get all twisted up in knots about immunity from prosecution for Aussie cops (the original sticking point), when we quite happily (and on Howard’s watch, too) signed and ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court? That particular commitment means that Aussie soldiers deployed anywhere around the world can be prosecuted for war crimes and/or crimes against humanity.
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