Getting feel for the rhythm of island life

By MARY-LOUISE O'CALLAGHAN Herald correspondent

Just a month ago, Nick Warner was in Paris in his newly acquired role as Australia's Ambassador for counter-terrorism when he got a call informing him his job description was about to change. Soon.

Twenty-three days later, the 53-year-old diplomat found himself making history of a very different kind, as he led the regional intervention force into the Solomon Islands in the first thrust of John Howard's robust new policy towards the South Pacific region.

Warner, a no-nonsense diplomat with several decades of experience in some of Australia's other conflict-resolution efforts overseas, does not shy away from the ambitions of Operation Helpem Fren - Solomons pidgin for helping a friend.

"The partnership that we begin with Solomon Islands today is a long-term commitment. The problems will not be fixed overnight. [But] we are determined that from today Solomon Islanders [will have] a better life, a safer life, a more prosperous life," he said from the tarmac of Henderson Field, minutes after his arrival on Solomons soil.

It was an extraordinary pledge for an Australian diplomat to make and to fulfil it will involve the virtual remaking of a nation.

But Warner has full political backing in Canberra, if not Wellington, for making such a claim, reflecting the tectonic shift in Australian policy towards the South Pacific region that has taken shape in barely two months.

Being at the forefront of such a change is a challenge that appears to excite the former intelligence analyst far more than it daunts him.

"Obviously the job carries a good deal of responsibility and a good deal of authority. We will have almost 2500 Australians, New Zealanders and personnel from a whole range of Pacific island countries," he said in his first interview as Special Co-ordinator of the Solomons operation.

"Ensuring they are able to perform their tasks safely, and that they go home to their countries soon and well, is very important," says Warner, but it is clear his focus is equally on his commitment to deliver to Solomon Islanders their promised chance to rebuild their nation.

"People everywhere have a right to live their lives peacefully, to go about their daily business without threats or violence or intimidation, to have their children educated in schools, to have illness attended to, to have a government that is permitted to govern for the benefit of all people, free from intimidation by armed thugs.

"Solomon Islands used to be such a place," says Warner.

"For too long this country has suffered at the hands of a small number of militants and criminals who have terrorised Solomon Islands society, brought the country to its knees and done a disservice to the reputation of Solomon Islanders as good and generous people.

"Solomon Islands is a young country of great promise. We are here to help Solomon Islanders fulfil that promise," says Warner, who is realistic about what this involves.

"While law and order is being restored, we will work with you to bring stability to the budget, to rebuild the machinery of government and restore the delivery of essential Government services to people. The conditions for economic growth and improved living standards will be put in place."

The son of famous Australian journalists Denis and Peggy Warner, he was born in Singapore, travelled extensively through South-east Asia as he grew up, and is used to thinking outside the square.

This he demonstrated within days of his arrival in the Solomons, when he accepted an invitation to meet founding leaders of the Malaita Eagle Force (MEF), the militia who helped elements of the police carry out the coup in June 2000.

Risking a potential backlash from Solomon Islanders tired of the MEF's stranglehold on Government funds and disappointed that the intervention might be going to do a deal with these men (including the best known of them, Jimmy Rasta), Warner flew to Malaita just five days after his arrival.

But he was careful to craft his meeting within the context of a provincial visit and used the opportunity to personally and publicly deliver the message to Rasta and his men that they must hand in their weapons before the expiry of a gun amnesty on August 21.

"There will be no negotiations, no deals," he said.

His prize was an undertaking by Rasta and his cohorts to hand in all of their arms on August 15. No one, including Warner, actually thinks all weapons will be returned, but it's a good start.

Today, Warner will fly to the Weathercoast to take up a similar offer of weapons surrender from a group of key Guadalcanal militants led by Andrew Te'e, and later in the week he hopes to meet Te'e's arch-enemy on the Weathercoast, Harold Keke.

Warner, after announcing on the weekend that he had established communications with Keke, wanted for a number of murders by the police, declared a news blackout on the progress of these talks with the deftness of touch of someone who knows just how delicate such matters are, operationally and politically.

After more than a decade with the Office of National Assessments, Canberra's peak intelligence assessment agency, Warner's foreign affairs career is peppered with experience in Australia's efforts to mediate and keep the peace in places like Rhodesia, as it was becoming Zimbabwe, Cambodia and most recently in Bougainville.

It is this most recent experience as Australia's High Commissioner to Papua New Guinea during the protracted and crucial negotiations for the Bougainville Peace Process that Warner is likely to draw upon in the months ahead.

"If you haven't lived and worked in Melanesia it would be extremely difficult ... to know the aspects of culture and the way that society works, the links between individuals and the family links, the language-ethnic connections which sometimes bring tensions, the degradation of key institutions of state," he says.

Although quick to acknowledge his newness to the Solomon Islands, which share a border with Bougainville, Warner is more reticent in acknowledging the skilful way in which he was able, as High Commissioner, to assist the Bougainville peace process through some of its worst bottlenecks both on the island itself and within the protracted negotiations between the Bougainvilleans and the PNG National Government in Port Moresby.

"When I arrived the peace process was essentially stable but not progressing very far and getting to know the Bougainvilleans of all persuasions, getting their trust, working closely with them, working out what their real objectives were, what were their bottom lines, working out how they like to work, the rhythm of their work, all that was really important in finally putting together the outline of the plan that became the peace agreement."

Getting this feel for the rhythm of the Solomon Islands is what Warner intends to do in the months ahead.

"You have to understand what is driving people, what their desires are, what their concerns, what the fears are. If you don't have that you don't have anything. If you do have that you have the basis of being able to move things forward."

New rules

* Militant leaders will be warned this week by the intervention force that time is running out for them to negotiate.

* A letter is to be sent to former militant leaders who are yet to contact the force or those the force has not been able to reach, explaining the role of the force.

* Deputy Police Commissioner Ben McDevitt of Australia will today open the first rural intervention post outside Honiara, at Avu Avu on Guadalcanal.

* The first troops from Papua New Guinea have arrived in the Solomons.

* The infantry platoon of 40 troops will join an Australian platoon and a Tongan platoon to form the newly created Pacific Island Company, to be headed by an Australian company commander.