From: SSAA, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ABC Radio 612 Andrew Lofthouse 10.28am 20th July 2000 Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer interview "I mean, you know, its not an easy situation in the Solomons. It doesn't work quite like organising a meeting here in Brisbane or wherever.. So, it remains to be seen a bit how this will go. Our hope is that the ceasefire talks can take place, at at last start to take place today, and that we can get a ceasefire in the Solomon Islands and then move towards a peace process." "If the ceasefire talks are successful, then we'll be sending a team of people from Canberra to the Solomon Islands to talk through some of the issues which will be central to peace, and one of those is to get the guns back off the streets and back into the armory from where they were stolen. And one of the options there is to put forward a gun buyback scheme. That might, unfortunately, be the only way it will be possible to get the guns off the streets, and we would be prepared to help with that." ------------------------------------------------ We hope that the Australian Federal Government will reflect upon the following words in regards to the success of gun buyback schemes in Africa. It is pleasing to see that there is an acknowledgement that the guns on the streets obviously came from Police and Army armouries. Just like some other pacific-rim countries that Australia has been funding for years, the break down of internal law and order has been hastened by the decay of discipline within the police and military. ------------------------------------------------ "Gun buyback programmes were not effective if they saw guns as assets." Virginia Gamba - Institute for Security Studies 18/1/2000 Business Day Johannesburg. On buying back firearms from civilians in Africa (Further gun buyback "success" quotes at http://www.ssaa.org.au/quoteozbuy.html) Cybershooters website: http://www.cybershooters.org List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___________________________________________________________ T O P I C A The Email You Want. http://www.topica.com/t/16 Newsletters, Tips and Discussions on Your Favorite Topics
