KEY POINTS:
He is the man who has plunged diplomatic relations between three countries into a continuing crisis for the better part of a year now.
One country, Australia, is convinced he is a fugitive who should be turned in to face serious sex-related charges. The Prime Minister of another, Papua New Guinea, has been accused of deliberately letting him flee and the Prime Minister of the third, the Solomon Islands, has just appointed him Attorney-General in the face of stiff opposition at home and abroad.
Meet Julian Moti, QC, one of the Australian Government's most wanted men.
Short, well spoken and suave, this 40-something lawyer is hardly the sort of man you would think could precipitate such events. But two weeks ago his longtime friend, the Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, finally saw him appointed the country's first law officer, ignoring Australia's repeated protests and requests for his extradition, threats of desertion from his own MPs and overriding a veto by the country's Public Service Commission that had stalled the appointment for 10 months.
And last week, a Papua New Guinea Defence Force inquiry condemned the country's Prime Minister, Sir Michael Somare, for being in cahoots with Mr Sogavare in facilitating Mr Moti's escape from Port Moresby last year - again, ignoring Australia's extradition request.
Fiji-born Mr Moti is an Australian citizen (his Australian passport has since been cancelled) wanted by its Government to face charges related to allegations of sexual misconduct involving a 13-year-old Tahitian girl in Port Vila, Vanuatu, in 1997. At the time he was a tax-paying resident of Vanuatu and ran a legal practice.
The case is complicated and drawn-out. One of her contentions - that Mr Moti had three testicles - was proved wrong on medical examination. She withdrew allegations she was raped and beaten, and then renewed them.
Mr Moti was arrested a year later and ordered to stand trial charged with unlawful sexual intercourse. Eminent Australian lawyers represented him, arguing there was insufficient admissible evidence for a trial, and the magistrate ruled he had no case to answer.
There were accusations Mr Moti had tried to interfere by bribing the magistrate and trying to work a compromise with the girl's father. He has consistently denied having sex with the girl or bribing the magistrate.
Ultimately, in 1999, the Vanuatu courts threw out the case after proceedings under the supervision of visiting New Zealand, Australian and Fijian judges including Bruce Robertson, former president of the New Zealand Law Commission, John Von Doussa, now the president of Australia's Human Rights Commission, and the recently ousted Chief Justice of Fiji, Daniel Fatiaki.
That, Mr Moti believes, is a convincing clean sheet. The Australian Government does not agree.
It says it has new evidence after interviews with the alleged victim, now 21, and other individuals.
Curiously, Australia did nothing to try or even arrest Mr Moti after the Vanuatu courts threw out the case a decade ago. In fact, he visited Australia on several occasions and lived there a number of times.
But there is little doubt the Australians had been watching him - especially his activities in the Solomons. Mr Moti says the Australians successfully dissuaded Prime Minister Allan Kemakeza when he was actively considering nominating him for the Attorney-General's office in early 2005.
Later the then Attorney-General, Primo Afeau, took Prime Minister Sogavare to court for not considering his opinion on the terms of inquiry into the riots of April 2006 that reduced Honiara's Chinatown quarter to cinders. The Solomons High Court upheld the disputed terms of reference and the Attorney-General (incidentally married to Mr Sogavare's niece) lost the case.
When the country's Judicial and Legal Service Commission cancelled Mr Afeau's appointment after that High Court decision, Mr Sogavare nominated Mr Moti as the new Attorney-General. Several eminent Solomon Islanders opposed the appointment, mainly on the grounds that Mr Moti, a foreigner, would have access to sensitive state secrets. His closeness to Mr Sogavare was also criticised.
Mr Moti countered by saying there was a precedent for foreigners holding equally sensitive posts and blamed the opposition on a racist mindset. When Mr Sogavare announced his appointment as the Solomon Islands' Attorney-General last year, Mr Moti was in New Delhi on an academic assignment. Almost immediately after the announcement, the Australian Government issued an extradition request to the Government of India.
But by the time the Indian authorities received the request, Mr Moti was already en route from New Delhi to the Solomon Islands. He was arrested when he landed in Port Moresby but was granted bail and then sought diplomatic asylum in the Solomon Islands High Commission.
A few days later, he escaped under cover of night.
A Papua New Guinea Defence Force plane flew him out of Port Moresby and dropped him off at an airstrip on a small island in the Solomon Islands from where he travelled to the capital, Honiara. Such a mission would obviously not have been possible without the knowledge and sanction of the highest authorities in Papua New Guinea.
Canberra was livid when it heard of the escape and turned the heat on Port Moresby, slapping a travel ban on PNG ministers visiting Australia. Some junior functionaries of the armed forces were suspended in due course but they contended that they were merely following orders.
Prime Minister Somare then ordered an inquiry into the mysterious flight. Despite mounting domestic pressure and an escalating diplomatic row with Australia, the inquiry proceeded at a snail's pace and was quietly wound up without conclusion.
However, an independent parallel inquiry by the Defence Force concluded just last week that the Prime Ministers of PNG and the Solomon Islands had collaborated closely in planning Mr Moti's escape. Mr Somare has all along denied knowing of the plan.
The Australians left no stone unturned. When Mr Sogavare and John Howard were attending the Pacific Islands Forum meeting in Nadi in October last year, the Solomons Islands police raided Mr Sogavare's offices in Honiara looking for papers. They seized a fax machine believed to have been used to send a document authorising Mr Moti to enter the country without valid documents.
Mr Sogavare later said that if they wanted the document, all they needed to do was ask. The raid was seen as interference in the country's internal affairs, though Australia insisted that it was carried out by the Solomons' own police force, which was headed by Australian Shane Castles, who was relieved of his duties soon after.
Relations between Australia, the Solomons and Papua New Guinea were at such a nadir the leaders of the two island nations did not even meet Mr Howard during the Nadi forum.
Mr Sogavare expressed fears he would be arrested on his return to Honiara, but it was New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark who reassured him, saying: "Prime Minister Sogavare will go home in a normal way, and there is no prospect of him being arrested when he steps off the plane."
Mr Moti holds arts and law degrees from Australian universities and has been adjunct professor of law at Bond University in Queensland. He has taught law and finance in several countries and was a visiting professorial fellow at two Indian universities until the announcement of his appointment in the Solomons.
He comes across more as an academic, articulating thoughtfully crafted sentences, rather than a fast-talking lawyer. He can expound for hours on histories of not just the Solomon Islands but also other Melanesian countries - particularly Fiji and Vanuatu - offering perceptive insights and comprehensive analyses relating historical events to current developments.
A former Australian High Commissioner to the Solomons, Patrick Cole, once said Mr Moti was "too independent for our liking".
Mr Cole was later sent home after being declared persona non grata by the Sogavare Government - his actions were deemed as interfering with its sovereignty. His words have given Mr Moti's supporters a platform for their belief about why Australia would go to such lengths to nail him.
"I think Australia sees him as a threat ... because he could create some difficulties for them having free access to their operations in the Pacific," says Solomon Islands Finance Minister Gordon Darcy Lilo. "They might be seeing it from the perspective that having people like him who have some very strong and deep understanding of Australia's foreign policy ... that he could jeopardise their free access in the Pacific."
Mr Moti puts it plainly: "It seems to me that my being Attorney-General is the reason I was declared a fugitive. They did nothing since 1997 when it surfaced, since 1999 when it was thrown out by the Vanuatu courts and even in 2005 when there was an unsuccessful move to nominate me AG."
Like Mr Lilo, many senior members of the Solomon Islands Government see this as an Australian conspiracy to prevent Mr Moti's appointment as the Attorney-General.
Australia says the timing of the extradition request and its aggressive follow-up is only a coincidence. The charges being serious, there is no time-limit for the offence and the case is being investigated by the Australian federal police, who have referred the information to the director of public prosecutions.
"If there is no time limit to prosecute me, why can't they wait until I finish my tenure as AG?" asks Mr Moti. "Why do they want me now?"
In an interview last year, he said he was not resisting facing the charges in Australia voluntarily "on the condition that I be bailed and be able to travel freely and ultimately attend a hearing when the date is appointed".
Meanwhile, as Mr Moti begins his job as the Solomons' top counsel, which of course gives him the powers to quash the extradition notice, Mr Sogavare is bracing himself for a no-confidence motion when Parliament opens on August 7. The Opposition and even his own MPs are up in arms over the appointments of Mr Moti and a new police chief.
Mr Moti's tenure is entirely dependent on Mr Sogavare's backing and the Australians may be waiting for his position to be weakened and for the Government to fall - which is not unlikely, given repeated threats by his own MPs to cross the floor more recently.
What then would be Mr Moti's options, considering he has apparently nowhere to go?
Asked in May about such an eventuality, he said: "I do have options. You don't suppose I'll tell you all my plans, do you?"
