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The Melanesian Spearhead Group’s (MSG) determination to grant full membership to the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) is not over.
MSG Leaders have ‘deferred’ deliberations on the ULMWP’s application for full membership, a decision attributed to legal wording issues last Thursday.
Therefore, an MSG Sub-Committee on Legal and Institutional issues is now heavily tasked to review and amend the membership requirement of the MSG.
Speaking to journalists after the meeting, MSG Chair Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare said the determination to grant full membership to the ULMWP is not over.
He describes the special leaders summit to be held in Vanuatu in September this year as “nothing short of the admission of ULMWP to a full membership of the MSG”.
“This is not over and I can see the determination of the leaders in this matter and that’s why we clearly direct the officials that you need to go back and do up this criterion and must be ready in time for the next meeting of Special Leaders’ Summit and the next meeting will be nothing sort of the determination of the ULMWP to a full membership of MSG.”
Meanwhile, the MSG Sub-Committee on Legal and Institutional issues is now heavily tasked to review and amend the MSG membership requirement.
A government statement said the deferral of the consideration of the application for full MSG membership by the ULMWP to later this year awaits these amendment undertakings.
It says the Sub-Committee is to work on membership criteria and guidelines to further them, considering fundamental principles, political aspirations and principles of international law to be completed by the end of September 2016.
MSG Leaders have agreed to meet in Port Vila, Vanuatu before the end of September this year.
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