NZ waits for Solomons to invite armed peacekeepers

11.45am

Some of the final details of the armed deployment New Zealand may send to the strife-torn Solomon Islands are likely to be hammered out in Australia at the weekend.

However, neither New Zealand nor Australia, who are likely to provide the bulk of an armed peacekeeping force, have yet to get a formal, constitutional request from the Solomons Islands although Solomons Prime Minister Allan Kemakeza, has asked for help.

Foreign Affairs Minister Phil Goff will meet his Australian counterpart Alexander Downer at the weekend.

Mr Downer said today if armed police were involved they would not go unless both governments were satisfied they would be protected by troops if that protection was necessary.

"We would very much like New Zealanders to be involved and I have discussed this issue with the New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff and I am meeting with him in South Australia this weekend.

"We are going to spend the best part of the weekend together so we will have a very good opportunity to workshop the whole issue in a great deal more detail," Mr Alexander told National Radio today.

He said police were likely to stay there for at least a year but development help for the Solomons was likely to last a lot longer.

Mr Goff said the "actual dimensions" of what was needed had yet to be decided.

However, he said the failing state of the Solomons had accelerated to the point where its government could not operate properly because of intimidation and threats of violence.

"By failed state I mean you no longer have the rule of law, the Government isn't in control, economic recovery can't take place and they have lost 25 per cent of their GDP over the last three years, social and health and education services can't be delivered," he told NZPA today.

Mr Goff said corrupt police are contributing as much to the breakdown of law and order in the Solomons Islands as the criminals who now largely control the country.

He said as fast as some of the high-powered weapons were handed in last year to the New Zealand military personnel, corrupt police handed them back to rebels.

Mr Goff said senior police were corrupt or unreliable.

"There are probably 700 or 800 high-powered weapons out in the community in the hands of people who have more often used their power for criminal purposes rather than law-making purposes."

"They are high-powered weapons controlled by the so called police field force which was a paramilitary group within the police.

"The problem is that the police have been part of the problem and not the solution and that is why you have had the breakdown in the rule of law."

Mr Goff said the Solomon Islands Parliament was expected to decide on July 8 if the prime minister's request for help should become a formal, constitutional request.

He said Australia and New Zealand wanted to avoid the image of a colonial power stepping in to another country.

"This is not something where we are lining the gunboats up to go in.

"This is a high-risk intervention if it occurs. It has costs and nobody does that sort of thing lightly. But equally, New Zealand and Australia and the other countries in the Pacific know there are huge costs if the state collapses in the Solomons Islands -- the cost of the place becoming a haven for drug smugglers, people smugglers, terrorists.

"The whole destabilising effect also has huge costs to the region as well of course to the people of the Solomons Islands who have suffered very greatly," Mr Goff told National Radio.

He said New Zealand wanted it to be a police-led operation with support from the military.

"It is not a small cost. That is part of New Zealand's role of being a good international citizen but also part of New Zealand's role in protecting its own interests because not to assist the Solomons Islands on a constitutional request from them is to lead to a much more serious situation that New Zealand the United Nations and other bodies such as the Commonwealth would be drawn into inevitably in the future," Mr Goff said.

Yesterday Australian Prime Minister John Howard said it was clear Australia and other Pacific nations had a responsibility to restore order to the country which was in danger of becoming the region's first failed state.

If it failed it could become a haven for drug-running, money-laundering and terrorism.

- NZPA