Solomons' new PM says law and order has been restored

The Solomon Islands' new prime minister declared that law and order had been restored yesterday, after hundreds of police and troops cordoned off parliament for its first sitting since his election last week triggered two days of rioting.

The massive police presence prevented any repeat of the violence, and officers took into custody an opposition lawmaker accused of inciting the riot that left 20 foreign police injured and the capital Honiara's Chinatown in smoldering ruins.

Two opposition lawmakers were arrested over the weekend on charges linked to the unrest, and as a military helicopter hovered over parliament yesterday, police bundled another, Charles Dausabea, into a truck and drove him away for questioning.

Police commissioner Shane Castles said Dausabea was voluntarily helping police with their inquiries, but a police spokesman later said that he has been charged with inciting a riot, and threatening violence and intimidation, and that he would appear today in Honiara Magistrates Court.

Newly elected Prime Minister, Snyder Rini, warned that more lawmakers and community leaders linked to the violence could be arrested in the coming days as local and international police continue investigations into the unrest.

"No one is above the law in this country," he said.

Castles also said police would arrest anybody they believed was involved in the rioting, regardless of their position in society.

"We need to pursue that investigation, and those people we believe took part in inciting violence ... need to be dealt with quickly. That's exactly what we're doing irrespective of whether they're MPs [members of parliament] or anyone else in the community,'' he told reporters.

He said police continue to provide protection for some lawmakers. Rini is being held under guard at an undisclosed location.

Dausabea was among 23 lawmakers who stormed out of parliament last Tuesday to protest Rini's election, but denied any involvement in the subsequent riots. The violence targeted ethnic Chinese amid rumors that China or Taiwan was involved in bribing lawmakers to vote for Rini -- a charge both countries deny.

Meanwhile, China sent a chartered aircraft yesterday to fly back hundreds of Chinese who fled the Solomon Islands to avoid last week's riots, Xinhua news agency said.

The China Southern Airlines aircraft left Guangzhou for Papua New Guinea, where about 300 Chinese have been staying since they were airlifted by Beijing out of Honiara, over the weekend.

The Beijing-backed Hong Kong newspaper Wen Wei Po said that some 350 people, including 20 from Hong Kong, would be on board the flight which was due back in Guangzhou yesterday evening.