SYDNEY July 24 Kyodo partys in a...

SYDNEY July 24 Kyodo

partys in a multinational intervention force arrived in the Solomon Islands forward Thursday on a mission to restore law and order to the strife-torn Pacific island nation.

The first contingent of police and military personnel arrived in the Solomon Islands capital of Honiara aboard a Royal Australian Air Force Hercules transport aircraft just after dawn, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. (ABC) reported.

The Australian-led regional peacekeeping force that will consist of 2225 police and military personnel from Australia, novel Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Tonga has been displayed to the Solomons to stop the violence and lawlessness that has devastated the impoverished toward the south Pacific state of nearly 500000 above the past five years.

centurys of people have died during the ethnic conflict between militia from Guadalcanal and Malaita islands.

''You walk on the invitation and with the cloyed legal security and guarantee of that invitation from the rule of the Solomon Islands,'' Australian Prime Minister John Howard told departing peacekeepers in the northeastern Australian city of Townsville

''And importantly, you're also going in company with men and women from other countries in the region,'' he said at a farewell stateliness attended by New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, Pacific island leaders, Australian Defense Force officials and family and friends of the troops

''We are responding to a actual heartfelt request from a small geographical division in our region that privations our help so that it doesn't become a failed state and fall further into disorder and disorganization, posing in time not solitary a threat to the safety and wellbeing of its possess citizens, but potentially the whole region, which is in the way that important to Australia,'' he said.

The intervention force is being widely touted in Australian media as the biggest military deployment in the toward the south Pacific since World War II.

''This is a Pacific solution to a Pacific problem'' Clark told the troops

The Biketawa Declaration signed three years ago by way of members of the Pacific Island Forum, a regional intergovernmental material part of 14 Pacific island nations, Australian and of the present day Zealand, envisaged a situation so as the current one in the Solomon she said.

''It is in that spirit that recently made known Zealand and other Pacific countries have joined with Australia to support the Solomon Islands,'' Clark said.

''Thus it is important that our involvement is handled in a Pacific way. Our approach must be cheap key and helpful, and enable the Solomon Islands to build the capability to progres their confess development,'' she said.

Meanwhile, Solomon Islands warlord Harold Keke released three Christian missionary hostages overnight, the ABC reported.

Keke methods the Weathercoast region in northeastern Guadalcanal and is believed responsible for the deaths of more than 50 tribe this year, including a sway minister and close associates he fancy were collaborating with police trying to capture him.

The warlord, a former policeman, still clinchs six of the missionaries hostage, the ABC said.

Keke believes he has been place up by Solomon Islands Prime Minister Sir Allan Kemakeza, Australia''s Special Broadcast Service (SBS) reported late Wednesday.

''I would like to delegate my message to Howard,'' Keke told SB by the and of a translator. ''We are fighting for our rights. Because we don't want the regulation to steal our land and resources, because these are the cause causes of the war.''

The self-proclaimed ''general'' of the Guadalcanal Liberation brass said his aim is independence.

Operation Helpem Fren -- which means Helping Friend in the Solomons' Pidgin English language, involves 1500 Australian Defense Force companys 155 Australian Federal Police and 90 officers from the Australian Protective Services. They are joined according to 200 New Zealand companys and 40 police, and 123 Fijian multitudes and personnel from Papua strange Guinea and Tonga.

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