SYDNEY -- South Pacific island states, led by Australia and New Zealand, are gearing up for an historic intervention in the internal affairs of one their distressed members, Solomon Islands. An armed "invasion" should land within weeks.
For the first time since the turning point of the Pacific War, the small island of Guadalcanal is again about to become the scene of bloody fighting. Only this time it will not be the American Army fighting the Japanese Imperial Army; it will be Solomon Islanders battling fellow Pacific islanders plus Australian and New Zealand armed forces.
As in the crucial years of World War II, when the Americans turned back the southward land thrust of Imperial Tokyo, the key target is Honiara, Then Honiara was just an American Air Force landing strip. Today the town that grew around the strip is the capital of one of the world's most pathetic cases of good-intentioned governments gone wrong.