Battlelines drawn over site of bloody WWII victory

SYDNEY- Sixty years after Australian soldiers engaged in fierce fighting with Japanese forces along Papua New Guinea's Kokoda Trail, a new battle has broken out over the tortuous jungle track.

Canberra has vowed to block a proposed gold mine along the track, fearing that parts of it could be destroyed and the surrounding forest cleared.

But impoverished villagers in the region said yesterday that they were in desperate need of the better schools, health care and job opportunities that the project could bring.

Critics said Australia had no right to ask its poverty-stricken northern neighbour to shelve a project likely to earn millions of dollars in revenue

A Queensland-based company, Frontier Resources, hopes to extract an estimated A$1.7 billion ($1.94 billion) worth of gold and copper from the proposed mine.

It has secured exploration rights over a mountainous 540 sq km area covering a large part of the track.

During intense fighting in 1942, more than 600 Australian soldiers died along the trail, which winds for 96km through the Owen Stanley Mountains north of the capital, Port Moresby.

More than 12,000 Japanese lost their lives by the time the campaign ended in January 1943, many from starvation.

Others resorted to cannibalism to stay alive.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard sent a delegation of senior officials to Papua New Guinea to express Australia's concerns and assess the impact of the proposed site.

"We obviously respect the laws of Papua New Guinea but the Kokoda Trail is of enormous historic and military significance to Australia," Howard said.

The opposition Labor Party said urgent action was required to protect the track, which has in recent years become a sort of pilgrimage for hundreds of Australians who walk it in homage to their fallen countrymen.

But Papua New Guinea Mining Minister Sam Akoitai said Australia was over-reacting.

Frontier Resources said Canberra's interference was heavy-handed and would deny local people the chance to benefit from the proceeds of the mine.

"It's an attempt to force our Australian attitude in relation to a particular battle on to private landowners that actually own the Kokoda Trail and who are in desperate need of development," said managing director Peter McNeil.

The Battle of Kokoda was described by one historian as a knife fight out of the Stone Age, with both sides enduring disease, exhaustion and a lack of supplies. It was the first land defeat of the Japanese in World War II.