The Solomon Islands' capital was calm yesterday as an Australian-led intervention force set about restoring law and order, one day after landing in the strife-torn Pacific nation.
Larger than normal crowds thronged Honiara's main streets, while rundown buildings were being cleaned and long-closed shops reopened as Operation Helpem Fren -- pidgin for "help a friend" -- started smoothly.
The Australian head of the regional mission Nick Warner said the arrival of the first wave of troops Thursday, in what is the biggest military operation in the South Pacific since World War II, had had an instant impact on life on the islands.
"From the moment we arrived things really did change," he told Australian broadcaster ABC.
"As of last night [Thursday] we had joint patrols with the Royal Solomon Islands police, we had close personal protection on Prime Minister [Sir Allan] Kemakeza and we have static guarding at key facilities around Honiara."
However Warner stressed restoring law and order across the entire island would be a lengthy process.
"We shouldn't fool ourselves that this is going to be a quick operation, it's not," he said.
The Solomon Islands has suffered a four-year civil war that, despite peace efforts, showed few signs of ending before the arrival of the intervention force, which has been endorsed by the 16-nation Pacific Forum.
In the days leading up to Thursday, militants were still around Honiara, although unarmed. The militants had slipped away by yesterday, however.
Another early sign of the operation's success came with the announcement that New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff will travel to Honiara with Australian counterpart Alexander Downer next week.
"We will be talking with Prime Minister [Allan] Kemakeza about the strengthened assistance package and how we can work with the Solomon Islands government and people to ensure the success of the intervention," Goff said in Wellington.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema