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The troubled relations between Canberra and Honiara have sunk to a new low after Australia banned Solomon Islands ministers and MPs from entering or transiting through Australia last week.
Australian officials in Honiara said that was a reaction to the appointment of controversial lawyer Julian Moti as the island nation's Attorney-General. Moti is wanted in Australia on child sex abuse charges relating to incidents that allegedly took place in Vanuatu in 1997, and the Australian Government has been pressing for his extradition for nearly a year.
He was sworn in as the Government's top attorney nearly 10 months after the Solomon Islands Public Service Commission brought a stay on his appointment when it was first announced in September last year. There has been opposition to his appointment from several quarters over the months. Even after he took office last week, the country's Deputy Solicitor-General resigned in protest.
But the Manasseh Sogavare Government has consistently brushed aside all resistance, just as it has repeatedly ignored Australia's demands for his extradition. Much of the senior Government leadership believes that the charges against Moti - a close friend of Sogavare - are politically motivated and that domestic protests are orchestrated by external forces (read Australia).
Meanwhile, Sogavare has avoided an Opposition motion of no confidence in his leadership, sparked by the Moti affair.
The motion had been scheduled to proceed on Friday, but Sogavare has announced a delay in the resumption of Parliament until August 7, citing constitutional reasons. He denied reports that at least eight members of his Government were prepared to cross the floor on the Moti issue.
The latest development with the sudden enforcement of the travel ban has put paid to several ministers' travel plans and left at least one stranded in Europe. This is the second time that such a ban has been imposed: last year Australia retaliated to the expulsion of its High Commissioner who, according to the Solomons' Government, had been interfering with its internal affairs. That ban, however, was relaxed on a case-by-case basis over the months - but Australia has made it clear that the new ban would be stringent.
Sogavare has said that his Government will not retaliate but the ban will come in handy for the hawks in his Administration.
Australia spearheads Ramsi (Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands), the regional initiative which includes New Zealand. The mission comprises armed forces and civilian personnel from across the Pacific Islands region stationed throughout the archipelago, following the 2003 intervention that ended years of lawlessness that brought the country to its knees.
In its first phase Ramsi successfully disarmed gangs of looters, quickly restoring public order and since then it has worked with the Government in rebuilding the country's institutions while building capacity within the local population to run them.
Public opinion in the islands is largely in favour of Ramsi's achievements but there have been increasing demands, especially in the past few months, for it to reveal an exit strategy. Senior Government politicians have more recently come out openly against what they perceive as Ramsi exceeding its brief.
As if in response, Ramsi has put out a high-profile multimedia campaign detailing its achievements and why it makes sense for it to continue its work. The mission has also justified the legal immunity for its personnel, the need for which some in the Government have recently questioned.
There is no doubt that the country needs Ramsi at this stage. But there are elements that are getting increasingly uncomfortable as the regional mission reintroduces checks and balances into the country's systems to bring back good governance. According to senior Ramsi sources, it has plans to clean up the bureaucracy in the coming months and inevitably that is where it is bound to face its toughest opposition.
The straws are in the wind already.
Much against Ramsi's recommendations, the Government replaced the Australian police chief with one from Fiji. And just last week Sogavare came out strongly in defence of this new police chief's plans to rearm certain sections of the police force. This is the first time such a move is being contemplated after the force was disarmed during the first months of the Ramsi action in 2003.
When Ramsi's deputy chief, New Zealander Jonathan Austin, expressed his concerns at the plan saying the country was not yet ready for an armed police force, Sogavare objected saying the country could not live forever under a foreign armed force and that the country did not need Ramsi to say when it would be ready for raising its own armed police force.
Both the Australian and the Solomon Islands governments have so far insisted that their bilateral relations and Ramsi's operations have had no bearing on each other. But given the overwhelming involvement of Australia in the regional force, the rapidly deteriorating political relationship is bound to blur that distinction sooner than later. It is already beginning to show.
Meanwhile, as Papua New Guinea went to the polls earlier this month, a leaked PNG Defence Force inquiry report into Julian Moti's mysterious flight from that country concluded that Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare must be charged over the alleged escape.
Moti was arrested when he landed in PNG but sought shelter in the Solomon Islands High Commission in Port Moresby after being granted bail. He later flew out in a PNG Defence Force plane that landed at an airstrip in the Solomons. The Australians, who were in hot pursuit, protested to the PNG Government and Somare ordered an inquiry that was quietly disbanded a few months later.
The independent Defence Force inquiry report says it has found a high level of collaboration and collusion between the prime ministers of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands over Moti's escape. Somare continues to deny that he ordered the secret flight.
The findings of this report will only strengthen Australia's resolve in tightening the screws on the Solomons regime on the Moti issue. But it needs to be cautious. Pushed to the wall, there is nothing stopping the Solomon Islands administration from obliterating the already blurring line that distinguishes Australia from Ramsi - ultimately creating conditions for its premature exit.
The cost of such an eventuality both to Solomon Islanders and the rest of the region - who fund Ramsi - would be incalculable.
* Dev Nadkarni edits the www.islandsbusiness.com news website.
Pacific leaders sitting on a timebomb
"There was a very high level of collaboration and collusion" between Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Michael Somare and Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare over the escape from PNG of wanted Australian lawyer Julian Moti, according to a leaked report of a PNG Defence Force inquiry.
Somare has sat on the report of the inquiry, chaired by PNG Justice Gibbs Salika, since it was presented to him in March. He is seeking to have the report declared null and void in court.
The leaked report quoted a diplomatic note from the Solomons requesting "co-operative intervention by PNG to provide Moti safe passage to Solomon Islands" and for the PNG Government to direct the public prosecutor to withdraw court action.
Australian authorities want Moti to face charges that he raped a 13-year-old girl in Vanuatu in 1997, and the Solomons' Public Service Commission plans a court challenge to Moti's appointment as Attorney-General.
The leaked report said Somare misled PNG's parliament when he said the case against Moti was discharged in a Vanuatu court.
It said the Registrar of the Vanuatu Supreme Court told the inquiry in a letter the Moti case was still sub judice there.
In September 1999 the Public Prosecutor applied for leave to have the matter moved from the Magistrates Court to the Supreme Court and to quash the August 1999 decision of the Senior Magistrates Court to dismiss the charges against Moti, the registrar said.
The leaked report said that now-sacked PNG National Security Advisory Council head Joseph Assaigo told PNG Defence Force acting commanding Colonel Tom Ur: "I got a direction to get rid of the copra bag."
It said Somare's Chief of Staff, Leonard Louma, called Assaigo and told him: "It is a kind of mandatory directive, go and deal with Defence or Police and get rid of him."
The report found Somare gave the direction and that Louma's evidence to the inquiry was "evasive, vague and puzzling".
The entire Moti operation was illegal and breached PNG's constitution, it said.
The inquiry board recommended Somare, Louma, Assaigo and Ur be charged under PNG's Organic Law on the Duties and Responsibilities of Leadership.
The military officers involved "may be dealt with under the Criminal Code, Civil Aviation Laws and Migration and Customs laws".
Various Government officials lied under oath, the report said.
This month, Somare's press officer, his daughter Betha, said the Prime Minister did not give the orders for Moti's flight and as far as the Government was concerned there was nothing to hide.
- AAP
