• The Solomons is a chain of scattered islands stretching across 600,000 sq km of ocean in the southwest Pacific, but has only 29,785 sq km of land. In the late 1800s the Solomons was a source of slave labour for Australia?s sugar farms. The trade was called ?blackbirding?.

• The Solomons has an estimated 465,000 people, predominately Melanesian. More than 95 per cent of its people are Christian. English is the official language, but there are 63 different native languages.

• The Solomons was once a British protectorate known as ?The Happy Isles?. Traditional life-style still dominates the Solomons and the country?s coat of arms includes a crocodile, shark, two frigate birds, eagle, spears, shield and turtle.

• The Solomons was the site of some of the fiercest fighting between Allied forces and the Japanese during World War Two. The Battle for Guadalcanal was a major turning point in the war, allowing the US-led forces to push the Japanese back into Asia.

The Solomons gained independence in 1978. The economy is founded on copra, fishing, cocoa, palm oil, timber and gold, but 95 per cent of islanders live subsistence lives. Government total debt surged to 110 per cent of gross domestic product in 2002, of which 79 per cent was external debt. It has not met any debt servicing for the past two years and has been unable to pay public servants for months, sparking strikes.

• Tensions between Guadalcanal and Malaita islanders over land stretch back to World War Two when Malaitans first moved to the new capital Honiara on Guadalcanal. Malaitan militia staged a coup in 2000 and held the then Prime Minister hostage, forcing him to resign, and a new election was held, leading to renewed peace talks. A peace treaty was signed in October 2000 in the Australian city of Townsville, ending two years of fighting. It contained a weapons disarming agreement and a general amnesty.

Militia splintered, with members forming armed criminal gangs, while the leader of the Guadalcanal militia Harold Keke refused to sign the peace treaty and became a renegade warlord in his Weathercoast stronghold southwest of Honiara.

-Ethnic fighting and lawlessness has claimed hundreds of lives in the Solomons during the past five years, with traditional beheadings and armed shootouts common. Up to 30,000 people were driven from the homes during the ethnic fighting.