Aussie conman avoids prison after lunch with jailer

SYDNEY, Feb 5 (Reuters) Australia's most high profile conman, once a confidante of British prime minister's wife Cherie Blair, has managed to again avoid prison -- this time after a long lunch with his South Pacific island jailer.

Peter Foster, who led South Pacific police on an island hopping chase in January, was released from a Vanuatu jail yesterday after serving only half of a six-week sentence for illegally entering the country.

Foster, once known as a flamboyant playboy, said he managed to cut short his time behind bars after a lengthy steak lunch with his jailers.

''The director of corrective services is a very decent chap, with my arresting officer, the three of us went out to lunch for probably longer than was prudent,'' Foster told Australian radio today.

Foster fled Fiji in January where he was facing fraud charges and waded ashore from a ship onto a remote Vanuatu beach, clutching his personal belongings in a plastic bag.

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.

Police captured Foster in a dawn raid and he was later convicted of illegally entering the country. He was sentenced to six weeks in jail last week, but had already spent half that time behind bars in a police cell and argued he should be released early under a special Vanuatu law covering minor offences.

Foster, who embarrassed the British government in a scandal known as ''Cheriegate'', plans to fly to Australia later today.

Foster 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 AKJ DB1115