|HT|
The prime minister of the riot-hit Solomon Islands defied pressure to resign Sunday, saying a wave of torching and looting that swept the capital had been orchestrated by a few people with "evil intention" to topple him. Shattered glass and rubble still lined the streets of Honiara as Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare addressed the nation, a reminder of the three-day eruption in violence blamed partly on poverty, hunger and frustration with his policies.
"It is very clear that the recent events were well planned and orchestrated to remove me as the prime minister for unsubstantiated reasons," Sogavare said, after a night-time curfew and roughly 150 foreign peacekeepers from Australia and Papua New Guinea helped to restore some calm over the weekend.
"I want to show the nation that the government is fully intent and nothing will move us. We must and will never bow down to the evil intention of a few people," Sogavare said.
Many residents of the Pacific island nation of 800,000 people believe his government is corrupt and beholden to Beijing and other foreign interests.
(Except for the headline and the pictorial description, this story has not been edited by THE DEN staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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