Rich in natural resources, West Papua, New Guinea, has recently attractedWestern corporate interest. But as its social and environmental interestscome under pressure, figures such as Mary Robinson, Peter Sutherlandand George Mitchell are all giving it their attention. Why the sudden interest in this island? Iva Pocock reports

Many Irish citizens will never have heard of West Papua, the Indonesian province occupying the western half of New Guinea. Yet in recent times, two of Ireland's most high-profile international figures - Mary Robinson and Peter Sutherland - and the key broker in the Northern Ireland peace process, George Mitchell, have been giving it their attention.

Why are a former president, a former attorney general, and the former Northern Ireland all-party talks chairman concerned with this far-flung province? And why were four Irish people arrested recently in the Dutch embassy, in Dublin, wearing T-shirts saying "West Papua Betrayed"?

Just under five times the size of Ireland, with a population of two million, West Papua is the easternmost province of Indonesia, previously known as Irian Jaya. It is immense in its tribal and ecological diversity, with some 240 different tribal peoples and vast tracts of virgin rainforest.

Since the 1960s, an estimated 100,000 West Papuans have died under Indonesian military rule. Robinson's concern with West Papua is in her role as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and relates to human rights abuses associated with the campaign for political self-determination by West Papuans.

Last year, six months before the non-violent leader of the independence movement in West Papua, Theys H. Eluay, was murdered, she pledged her support for West Papuan human rights. This followed a meeting with West Papuan human rights advocates, in which they briefed Robinson about ongoing killings, arbitrary imprisonment and torture of West Papuans by Indonesian security forces.

Writing in the International Herald Tribune last month, Stanley A. Weiss, former chairman of American Premier, a mining and chemicals company, said that while the conflict in Papua may be rooted in "politics and religion", the ongoing fighting is less "about independence than about who pockets oil, gas and timber revenues".

West Papua is extremely rich in mineral resources; and in the 1990s, two giant gas fields, named the Tangguh fields, were discovered. The energy company BP now has a 50 per cent stake in these gas fields; and in his role as chairman of BP, Sutherland is involved with West Papua.

In developing the gas field, BP says they "aspire to establish world-class standards for the social, environmental and health and safety aspects of our operation in Papua". In the company's efforts to attain these standards, it has appointed an international advisory panel to advise "not just on politics" but also on environmental, community and social issues in the Tangguh gas field area.

The four-strong advisory panel is chaired by former US senator and Northern Ireland all-party talks chairman George Mitchell. According to a BP spokeswoman, it is the first time such a panel has been appointed so early in the development of a project.

Mitchell and his fellow advisers - Sabam Siagian, the former Indonesian ambassador to Australia; the Rev Herman Saud, the head of the Evangelical Christian Church in Papua; and Lord Hannay of Britain - visited West Papua in June this year, and are currently working on the report of their findings.

BP will need all the help it can get in negotiating the political and social turmoil in West Papua.

Just last month, it lost out on a joint bid with the Indonesian state-owned oil company Pertamina to supply $13.25 billion worth of liquid natural gas to China's Shenzhen province. There were allegations that the Chinese gave the deal to Australia because of ongoing KNN - the Indonesian acronym for the endemic corruption, collusion and nepotism characteristic of the former Suharto dictatorship - and concerns over stability of supply.

The take-over of West Papua in 1962 by Indonesia's previous leader, Sukarno, was the focus of activists from the Dublin-based West Papua Action protesting in Dublin on August 15th this year. Arrested in the Dutch embassy on the 40th anniversary of the signing of the New York Agreement between the Netherlands and Indonesia, they believe the Dutch betrayed the West Papuans.

In a letter to the Dutch ambassador, they said "as your government fully knows, an estimated 30,000 deaths occurred in West Papua from 1963 to 1969, underscoring how the rights, including the rights of free speech, freedom of movement and of assembly of the inhabitants, were not fully guaranteed as per the agreement". They urged the Dutch to "call publicly for a proper act of self-determination in West Papua in accordance with international practice as agreed to at the UN 40 years ago today".

Mark Doris, co-ordinator of West Papua Action, says he realised that the plight of West Papuans was "buried in silence" when he tried to find out about the country in the early 1990s. The organisation, the patrons of which are Indonesia human rights campaigner Carmel Budjardjo and veteran East Timor campaigner Tom Hyland, was founded in 1996.

For information, contact West Papua Action, tel: 01-8827563; e-mail:wpaction@iol.ie; website: www.westpapuaaction.buz.org