NICK WARNER, COORDINATOR INTERVENTION FORCE: Mark, I have an oversight responsibility of this operation. As you know, it has police, military and significant civilian development assistance elements to it and my role is to unite those three different operating cultures together to make sure that they work as a unified whole.

MARK DAVIS: It's a slightly unusual arrangement to have a diplomat effectively in charge of a military force.

NICK WARNER: This is an unusual operation. I've said before it's a complex and perhaps even unique operation. To have a diplomat running something like that, it's not really so unusual. If you look at a typical UN peacekeeping operation - and this is not a peacekeeping operation, nor is it UN - but those operations always have a special representative of the Secretary-General. That person almost inevitably is a diplomat, or a former diplomat.

MARK DAVIS: That's true. It is a critical distinction. It is not a UN operation, it's certainly not a peacekeeping operation.

The key question here, though, or the question mystery, if you like, is why it's important to go in now. In January of this year, Alexander Downer was virtually mocking the idea that Australia should intervene in the Solomons. The key fighting was really two years ago, rather than now. Still the key question - why today?

NICK WARNER: In any operation of this sort, it's important that all the relevant factors line up at the right time. That's what happens in any UN peacekeeping operation.

You need the support of the parties, you need the support of the people, you need the support of the international community. They all have to come together at the same time, and that's what has happened on this occasion.

MARK DAVIS: This operation has potentially a very sharp end to it. So far you've been welcomed in Honiara but, for instance, if you go to the Weather Coast, Harold Keke country, if you're not welcome there, what response is open to you?

NICK WARNER: In respect of the Weather Coast, police operations, the role of the military, the military is here for two primary purposes. Firstly they're here to protect the police in the performance of their duties.

So this is a police-led operation. The police will do what police always do. They'll seek warrants, they'll knock on doors. In this case they'll, for instance, look for weapons. If the police were to get into trouble, the military would be here to protect them.

MARK DAVIS: But let's move towards what the likely conflicts are going to be. What do you do if you don't receive a warm welcome, that you appear to have received in Honiara?

NICK WARNER: I think you're overly focusing on Harold Keke, I must say. He is one of many, in fact, militia leaders in this country. There are a number on the island of Guadalcanal, where Honiara is located, and there are a number on the island of Malaita.

I would hope that we could have exactly the same relationship with Harold Keke. He's a militia leader, he has weapons, we need to talk.

MARK DAVIS: Well, what Harold Keke says and now a number of his opposing militia leaders are saying, is that the problem in the Solomons is the government, the government that asked... invited Australia in.

In your opinion, is the government corrupt? In your opinion, is the government a source - a substantial source of violence, which is what they're being accused of?

NICK WARNER: What I can say to you is this, that we've had an overwhelmingly positive welcome from the people of the Solomon Islands. There are all sorts of sources, reasons, for the conflict that broke out here in the late 1990s and, indeed, for the 2000 coup.

They have to do with ethnicity, they have to do with land, they have to do with militancy and they do have to do with corruption. But it's a whole mess of very complicated factors.

MARK DAVIS: From your PNG experience, you'd be well aware of the complexity of Melanesian land disputes. Aren't we stepping into what really could be seen as a traditional land dispute and taking a punt on who the goodies are?

NICK WARNER: No, I don't think so in either respect. Firstly, we're not going to get involved in the land dispute issue. That's an issue for the people of the Solomon Islands. It's a people for the government of the Solomon Island. It's not an issue for the regional assistance mission. We won't be getting involved in that at all.

MARK DAVIS: Well, it's certainly an issue on the Weather Coast. They're virtually wanting to proclaim their independence to protect their land rights. That's what they see as the central issue. This is what you are having to confront.

NICK WARNER: I think we're confronting a lot more complex set of issues than just land issues. What we're confronted here is a society, a country that was moving towards becoming a failed state where the rule of law had all but collapsed, where government was almost not functioning, where groups of thugs and criminals will turn up at the central bank with high-powered firearms and demand, and often receive, many millions of dollars in so-called compensation.

MARK DAVIS: Nick Warner, thanks for joining us.