SYDNEY, Dec 14 (AFP) - Papua New Guinea could break up into around six lawless mini-states and destabilise much of the Pacific, a report warned Tuesday as Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer flew to the country for talks on a plan to restore order.
Worsening law and order and entrenched corruption could create a similar situation to the Solomon Islands before last year's regional intervention, it said.
But PNG's greater size and lack of any true national identity would make it harder to fix, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute report said.
"Then central government authority in PNG could collapse. Politics and the economy could be dominated by criminals, and the rule of law and respect for human rights could disappear," it said.
"HIV/AIDS could reach catastrophic proportions. Health and education services could cease to exist. And the country could disintegrate into half a dozen lawless and unviable mini-states."
While the attacks of September 11, 2001 increased concerns about the country's porous borders being exploited by international terrorists, the real concern was criminals, it said.
Potentially "within 10 or 15 years" PNG's problems might threaten to spread to its neighbours and if Australia did not help, no other country would, it said.
The report came as Downer left with a high-powered team of six other Australian ministers for talks with PNG counterparts on Wednesday, expected to be dominated by a continuing Australian project to restore law and order.
Canberra has pledged 800 million Australian dollars (624 million US) over five years for the task. It has already sent in some 64 of an eventual contingent of 210 Australian police, plus around half of a contingent of 64 government officials.
Downer said the package of assistance "to help improve law and order, economic management, border control and transport security" would be a major focus of the talks. It will be followed by a brief visit to the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia and New Zealand.
Since independence from Australia in 1975 PNG has had a succession of weak governments and a gradual decline in law and order.
Canberra has poured in billions of dollars in aid, with 436 million Australian dollars (331 million US) to be spent in the current Australian financial year to June 30. But this has done little to reverse the decline.
The capital Port Moresby is one of the region's most violent cities, where armed gangs known as "raskols" wreak havoc.
The report said around 29 percent of the country's expenditure was currently going to pay off international debt, while another 42 percent went on wages for the bloated administration.
The rest was insufficient and much of it was being stolen.
The population, currently 5.6 million, was set to double and could reach 20 million within the lifetimes of babies now being born -- the same as Australia's.
However, 85 percent lived in villages divorced from power centres like Port Moresby.
In 1997 elections 82 percent voted for candidates who lost, while 800 language groups and no pre-colonial concept of a state had made it hard for PNG to attract the loyalty of its own people, the report said.
It also faces an AIDS explosion on the scale of the worst affected parts of Africa, it said.
"PNG as a nation is an abstraction that seems to mean very little to most Papua New Guineans, and it has little on which to base a claim to their loyalty," it said.
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