Australian force to quell Solomon unrest
The 8,500-ton HMAS Manoora transport ship will act as a floating command post, hospital and supply base for the Australian-led peacekeepers, whose deployment was approved last week by the Solomon Islands parliament.
The commanding officer, Commander Martin Brooker, said the vessel and the 600-crew and support personnel aboard expected to drop anchor off the Solomons capital Honiara on Thursday, when the rest of the force is due to be airlifted.
"The Manoora's got a lot of capabilities and our primary role over there is going to be logistic support to the police forces and military elements there, to support them on the ground," Brooker told reporters in the northern city of Townsville.
The intervention force the biggest military deployment in the South Pacific since World War II will first secure Honiara, where the rule of law has collapsed after years of ethnic clashes between militias from Guadalcanal and Malaita islands, and following a police-backed coup in 2000.
Drafted as "special constables" into the police force, many former militiamen have turned to crime and extortion, using the threat of violence to demand payments from the government, while renegade warlords control swathes of remote countryside.
The unrest has almost bankrupted the former British protectorate of 450,000, and persuaded Australia to intervene because of what it sees as the risk that a failed state on its doorstep could be exploited by criminals and terrorists.
The force, expected to stay in the 1,000-island chain for several months if not years while the nation's legal system and government departments are built up, will consist mainly of Australian troops and police.
But it will also have small contingents from New Zealand, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Tonga.
Its members will be allowed to use lethal force if confronted by armed militia in the Solomons.
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