UNITED NATIONS, Aug 7: Pakistan on Wednesday called on the United Nations to play the same role of mediation and facilitation in the Kashmir dispute as it had done in the resolution of the Bougainville crisis.

Speaking at a UN Security Council meeting on the situation in Bougainville, the acting permanent representative of Pakistan to the UN, Masood Khalid, said: “I cannot but help expressing the wish that the very successful role of mediation and facilitation played by the UN in Bougainville could also be replicated in another, albeit far more long-standing and dangerous, dispute which also remains on the Security Council’s agenda, the issue of enabling the exercise of the right to self-determination by the people of Jammu and Kashmir in accordance with the resolutions of this council.”

The Bougainville Island — which fought a 10-year war of independence against Papua New Guinea before a ceasefire was brokered in 1998 — expressed a uniform desire for the UN to verify the end of stage II of weapons disposal so that elections could be held as soon as possible.

Saying that Pakistan supported the work of the UN political office in Bougainville, Mr Khalid noted that “this process will then clear the way for elections for an autonomous government in Bougainville in 2004, as well as the eventual holding of a referendum, in which the people of Bougainville will exercise their right to self-determination, in accordance with the provisions of the Lincoln and Arawa agreements. Pakistan strongly supports this path, which the parties have courageously agreed to follow.”

“The Bougainvillean people are showing a determination to move beyond weapons and concentrate on elections, building institutions and taking charge of their destiny,” Noel Sinclair, the head of the UN political office in Bougainville, told the Security Council during the meeting in which representatives of some 20 nations took the floor.