Australia is leading the biggest armed intervention in the South Pacific since World War II. More than 2,000 military personnel and police officers are being deployed in a multinational force to restore order to the Solomon Islands.
The twisting archipelago, 2,500 km (1553 miles) northeast of Sydney is in chaos.
Law and order has crumbled in a country once known as "The Happy Isles".
Much of the police force was involved in a coup three years ago. It came during a bitter civil war, fought out between rival ethnic groups over land rights and jobs.
Hostilities were officially brought to an end by the Townsville Peace Agreement brokered by Australia in October 2000.
At the time, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogovare pleaded with Canberra to send troops to cement the peace.
His request was rejected.
Mr Sogovare told ABC radio that a golden opportunity was missed.
"If Australia had come forward then and agreed to a peacekeeping force, the government would have come up with a very strong position on certain issues and we would have saved the situation," he said.
Uneasy peace
The Townsville accord demanded the "restructure of the police force, a weapons amnesty, and reconciliation".
Despite its sound intentions, the accord has been a failure.
The peace is - at best - uneasy. The ethnic war may be over, but the violence and corruption march on unabated.
So do the killings.
Dozens of people have been murdered this year. Last month Lance Gersbach, a 60-year-old Seventh Day Adventist missionary from Australia, was beheaded on the island of Malaita.
As the country slides further into anarchy, Australian Prime Minister John Howard has warned it could become a haven for "drug dealers, money-launderers and international terrorism".
His government is now prepared to flex its muscles in an unprecedented campaign in the South Pacific. Australia was the third military force in the US-led war in Iraq, and made a similar commitment in Afghanistan.
Since Papua New Guinea gained independence from Australia in 1975, successive governments in Canberra, wary of being seen as "neo-colonialist", have adopted a hands-off approach to the South Pacific.
Fears of terrorism in the wake of the attacks in the United States on 11 September, as well as the Bali bombings last October, have forced a major re-think.
Disarming a violent gang of militants led by the warlord Harold Keke would be one of the toughest challenges for the Australian-led force.
Keke refuses to recognise the peace deal signed three years ago.
For him and his brutal band of followers, who claim to have killed dozens of people, the ethnic war goes on.
There is speculation the Australian Special Forces could be sent in to track Keke down in his mountainous hideaway on Guadalcanal's remote Weather coast.
Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has said any opposition would be crushed.
"They would be extraordinarily unwise to put up any armed resistance. That would be quite suicidal," he said.
The multinational force would be expected to restore law and order within a few months, if not weeks.
Efforts to revive the economy and rehabilitate the institutions of government would take much longer.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has estimated that the operation could take up to 10 years, at a cost of Aus$850m (US$569m).
Such are the political sensitivities of direct intervention that Australia will seek regional approval at a meeting of the 16-nation South Pacific Forum in Sydney next week.
The final decision to deploy an international force will only be made when the Solomon Islands parliament makes an official request for outside help.
A special sitting in the capital Honiara is scheduled for early July.
One-Minute World News 
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