Women urged to aid Solomon Islands weapons amnesty

By MARY-LOUISE O'CALLAGHAN Herald correspondent

The civilian leader of the Solomon Islands intervention, Nick Warner, has made a special appeal to the nation's women to tell their menfolk to surrender all weapons.

Warning that the intervention forces would go after all weapons not handed in and the men possessing them, Warner said: "The time for the guns is over."

"Please talk to your men," the Australian diplomat told women while speaking at the official opening of the intervention force's first police outpost at Avu Avu, on Guadalcanal's remote Weathercoast.

"The peace mission we have brought to the Solomon Islands is for you as much as anybody else. I would just ask you to do this.

"To your brothers, please say to them, 'The gun amnesty ends on the 21st of August - hand in your gun!'

"And to your fathers, please, the same message, and to your sons."

Under special legislation passed for the intervention, the penalties for possessing a weapon are 10 years in prison and/or a $25,000 fine.

The leader of militants in the area, Andrew Te'e, said his men had already agreed to hand in their weapons but were hampered by heavy rains that have deluged the mountainous terrain this week.

Some of them would have to cross five rivers to reach Avu Avu so they did not make it, he said shortly before a dozen shotguns, rifles and homemade weapons that had been surrendered earlier yesterday were destroyed by members of the Australian Defence Force deployed to the area.

Te'e also called on rival militant leader Harold Keke, who controls the western end of the Weathercoast, to surrender his weapons.

"People have suffered enough."