Solomons peacekeepers start destroying weapons

3.00pm

HONIARA - An Australian-led intervention force destroyed 25 illegal weapons in the lawless Solomon Islands today and officials said they expect the surrender of guns to accelerate when an amnesty is declared next week.

Australians, New Zealanders, Fijians and islanders joined in a crowded ceremony in the South Pacific nation to drive an angle-grinder through the guns -- many of them home-made rifles but including a grenade launcher and a crossbow.

"Weapons such as these have brought fear to the hearts of our people for far too long," said Paul Tovua, head of the National Peace Council, which has struggled to end the ethnic fighting between Malaita and Guadalcanal islanders that began in 1998.

Tovua told Reuters the weapons had been handed in over the past three days, as the first of 2225 foreign police and soldiers began arriving in the former British protectorate on amphibious landing craft and in air force transport planes.

Another three were handed over today.

Tovua said he expected the surrender of an estimated 1300 illegal weapons in the nation of 450,000 to speed up next week, when an amnesty is declared in the ramshackle capital, Honiara.

"Most of these are coming from ex-combatants. I think the momentum will pick up as time goes by," he said.

Up to 1000 members of the intervention force are now on the ground in the Solomons, which has been held to ransom by armed ethnic militia since Malaitans, backed by supporters in the police, launched a coup in 2000.

A sun-baked archipelago 1800km northeast of Australia, the once Happy Isles turned tropical badlands has sunk deeper into anarchy and bankruptcy since the coup. Hundreds were killed in the fighting and 30,000 driven from their homes.

The multinational peacekeepers first role is to restore law and order to Honiara, where militants extorted money from the treasury, and whose residents clearly support the intervention.

Troops or police may then move out to the inaccessible provinces, where warlords such as Harold Keke hold sway, razing villages at will, while a long-term programme to rebuild the police, courts and government institutions gets into gear.

At the weapons destruction ceremony, onlooker Michael Wewe took officials by surprise by donning a pair of work gloves and asking to be allowed to saw one in half.

"People are being saved suffering from these guns," the mechanic with a logging firm told Reuters later.

Islanders are slowly getting used to the sight of blue-clad Australian and New Zealand police strolling alongside their Solomons colleagues in Honiara.

"This is 100 per cent different," said Solomons police constable Charles Fagatea, who rarely went out on foot patrol before because he might be killed.

"For three years our lives were in fear, but today we are out doing our duties normally," he added, chattering in English and the pidgin that loosely binds the nation of 60 different tongues.

For the foreign troops and police, most sleeping in tents under coconut palms near Red Beach where United States Marines stormed ashore 61 years ago to fight the Japanese, the chance to help their Pacific neighbour appears to be quite a buzz.

"It's fantastic," said Australian federal police Sergeant Donna Parsons, 26.

"It's an amazing experience and it's so welcoming here too. People seem really pleased to see us."

- REUTERS