Island-hopping Australian conman back behind bars

SYDNEY, Jan 15 (Reuters) Convicted Australian conman Peter Foster, once a confidante of British prime minister's wife Cherie Blair, is back behind bars after a bizarre South Pacific island police chase which saw him stow away on an old navy minesweeper.

Foster, once known as a flamboyant playboy, was forced to wade ashore from the minesweeper on a remote beach in Vanuatu clutching his personal belongings in a plastic bag, said police.

Foster, who embarrassed the British government in a scandal known as ''Cheriegate'', appeared in a Vanuatu court today charged with entering the country illegally.

He was remanded to reappear on Thursday.

Wanted on fraud charges in Fiji, Foster has led South Pacific island police on a series of bizarre chases.

While being pursued by Fijian police last October, Foster jumped off a bridge into a river wearing only black swimming trunks, but he hit his head and was bundled, semi-conscious, into an open-air police truck.

He fled Fiji while on bail more than a week ago, onboard an old Australian navy minesweeper, Vanuatu police said today.

But as the conman waded ashore on a Vanuatu beach last Monday, but he was spotted by an island villager.

''A local resident saw him. He had a small plastic bag with his belongings,'' Vanuatu police sergeant Andrew Kalman told Reuters.

For a week Foster hid in the Vanuatu capital Port Vila, a small South Pacific working port little changed from when author James A.

Michener wrote ''Tales of the South Pacific'' in the 1940s.

After a tip off Vanuatu police raided a luxury home in Port Vila yesterday. As police surrounded the house, Foster tried to jump from a window but again failed to escape the arm of the law and was taken to another small, humid island police cell.

Four island nations have issued wanted notices for Foster, with Vanuatu warning its residents ''Foster is a dangerous person with records of fraudulent activities''.

Foster, who embarrassed the British government in a scandal known as ''Cheriegate'', has been jailed on three continents for peddling bogus slimming products and using false documents.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair's wife, Cherie, has said she let her husband down over her friendship with style guru Carole Caplin and Foster, Caplin's then boyfriend, in the ''Cheriegate'' scandal.

Foster helped her buy two apartments in southwest England where her eldest son was at college.

REUTERS SY HT1218