Police officers leave for Solomon Islands

3.00pm


"Endless briefings" on the potentially explosive environment of the Solomon Islands have prepared the police contingent well for its deployment to help restore law and order.

Inspector Brent Holmes, who left Auckland's Whenuapai air base on an air force Hercules today with 24 other police officers, said the briefings had prepared them well on all aspects of the Solomon Islands where law and order has broken down after years of fighting among rebel groups.

The 25 police who left today will join 10 New Zealand police officers already in the Solomon Islands and will be part of the 2200-strong, Australian-led Pacific peace force made up of soldiers and police from seven Pacific islands nations.

The contingent includes member of the police special tactics group who will have access to firearms but most of the New Zealand police will be unarmed. They will wear the New Zealand police uniform with a black kiwi sewn onto their shirtfronts.

"We will report back through our New Zealand lines and Assistant Commissioner Tony Annandale will report back to the Australian lead," Mr Holmes said on National Radio today

He said one of the tasks of the police contingent was to restore the local police to their full capacity.

He said they would be "getting the police back up and running again, getting the population on side, community policing and general crime."

He said the contingent would be based in the capital of Honiara but would probably move around the islands although the extent of that had yet to be decided.

"We will be working with the Solomon Islands police. There are a lot of very good Solomon Islands policemen over there who are well trained and we hope to be able to give them the opportunity to get their police back up and running again," he said.

The head of the police contingent, Mr Annandale, has been in the islands for nearly three weeks as part of the advance party.

He told NZPA when they left from the Australian city of Townsville on July 25, that the New Zealand contingent would be patrolling within a day of arriving.

However, he said he was not concerned the New Zealand police under his commander were not armed.

He said their intelligence did not indicate rebel Harold Keke and other warring factions and lawless groups would see the police as a target in the capital of Honiara, or further afield.

"We have got a lot of support and I think we will be able to deal with any situation," he said.

Some places the police would go would not need armed back up from soldiers, but if necessary the military muscle was available, he said.

Prime Minister Helen Clark told the official farewell in Townsville three weeks ago the international force would help re-establish law and order and give the Solomon Islanders the fresh start they deserved.

She said the New Zealand police would not be back for some time.

"It is going to take time to build a police force that can really deal with the bad elements of the Solomon," Miss Clark said

Harold Keke was reported last week to be ready to surrender as early as tomorrow and disarm, handing over weapons to the Australian-led intervention force.

Keke also told intervention force chief Nick Warner that six hostages he had been holding were now dead during a meeting between the two men on the troubled Weathercoast region, on the remote side of the main island of Guadalcanal.

Yesterday Mr Warner declined to comment on the disarming after another meeting Keke. The intervention force's police chief Ben McDevitt and military commander Lieutenant Colonel John Frewen were also at the meeting.

- NZPA