Solomons PM on mystery Korean trip

ABC News/January 31, 2003

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Allan Kemakeza has left his troubled South Pacific nation for an apparently unexplained trip to South Korea.

Mr Kemakeza, already criticised for signing a deal with a pyramid finance group, left the country today without explanation.

Newspaper The Solomon Star reports one official as saying Mr Kemakeza was going to talk with Korean religious leader Sun Myung Moon and his wealthy Unification Church.

Three years ago Mr Kemakeza, then deputy prime minister, attended a Unification Church meeting in Korea.

State-owned Solomon Islands Broadcasting says it is not clear why Mr Kemakeza left but it believes he is going to take delivery of a gift of 10 fishing boats from South Korea.

The country has been bankrupted by a four-year civil war.

Mr Kemakeza struck a deal to save his war-torn nation earlier this month with a group called the Royal Association of Nations and Kingdoms, which turned out to be part of a pyramid financing scam run by a man facing arrest in Papua New Guinea.