Solomons Governor General wins apology over search

By MARY-LOUISE O'CALLAGHAN Herald correspondent

The head of the Australian-led intervention in Solomon Islands, Nick Warner, has been forced to apologise to the country's Governor General, Sir John Ini Lapli, after he was searched by two police officers over the weekend.

The apology comes as the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (Ramsi) witnessed another landmark in the three-month intervention's history with the tabling of a coherent 2004 national budget yesterday.

The budget was prepared with the help of a team of Australian Treasury officials deployed as part of the civilian arm of the multi-million-dollar intervention in August.

It comes as the military arm of the intervention announced it had withdrawn from the Weathercoast, the country's most notorious hotspot, this week.

Although front-page news in the capital, Honiara, the random search of the Governor General at Honiara's domestic airport on Sunday was not expected to offset these achievements or the public support enjoyed by Ramsi.

Warner, an Australian diplomat and acting head of the Participating Police Force, Mark Johnson, made a personal apology to Sir John at Government House yesterday.

News of the incident leaked after Sir John, who has been a strong supporter of the intervention, wrote a letter of complaint to the Solomon Islands Police Commissioner, William Morrell, copied to Warner, alleging he had been treated like a suspected criminal after he disembarked from a domestic flight.

"To search the Governor General as if he is a suspected criminal lacks respect and questions the sovereignty of Solomon Islands as a nation," his letter said.

A spokeswoman for Ramsi said all passengers who disembarked at the domestic terminal were subjected to searches on Sunday as part of a programme of random searches being carried out by Ramsi.

She said Sir John had told Warner and Johnson that he accepted their personal apologies.