The president of the autonomous Papua New Guinea province of Bougainville says he may call on the United Nations to send in peace keepers if violence and lawlessness continue in the Konnou region in the south of the main island.
John Momis says Bougainville won't be able to hold a referendum on independence, as scheduled from 2015, if the rule of law is not fully observed or guns remain in the community.
He says peace keepers may be needed if a summit he's called of the wider south Bougainville community doesn't come up with ways to solve the problem internally.
"If the internally developed strategy doesn't work, to put an end to this problem, then we might have to consider the deployment of a kind of foreign intervention force - not on a big scale like the RAMSI style in the Solomons, but having the presence of peace keepers or peace monitors in Bougainville to encourage those with guns, many of whom are at loggerheads with one another, to dispose of guns."
Bougainville president John Momis.
