The Polynesian island of Tikopia in the eastern Solomon Islands, and Moto Lava, part of Vanuatu, had been cut off from the outside world after Cyclone Zoe raged through the region on Saturday.

However freelance cameraman Geoff Mackley Friday flew from Vanuatu by helicopter to Tikopia on Friday to discover there were no fatalities among the island's people.

From the Vanuatu capital Port Vila a French Navy Puma helicopter reached the island of Mota Lava to find that, while it too had been cut off all week, its inhabitants had survived unscathed.

However the fate of inhabitants on another island in the Solomons, Anuta, remained unclear Saturday as no contact had yet been made.

Zoe, at the top end of the storm severity scale, hit Tikopia and Anuta, home to some 3,000 people, on December 28.

Mackley, in a report for The Australian newspaper, said the Tikopia people had survived.

"Every single person was alive and there they were, standing in front of me," Mackley said.

The New Zealander said locals running toward the aircraft with tales of survival greeted them.

"The whole way there I thought I would see hundreds of dead and festering bodies but instead we were just overwhelmed with people running toward the plane," Mackley said.

Residents said they had enough warning of Zoe to hide in mountain caves that had been used for centuries to shelter from tropical storms.

But Mackley said the inhabitants were in urgent need of fresh water and salt, and there was a risk of disease spreading throughout the island.

Villagers told Mackley the fruit they usually ate was ruined by the storm and their last water supply was contaminated by salt water and only available at low tide.

"They used communal toilets which were basically holes in the ground, so now there's a risk of disease," he added.

The failure of Australia, New Zealand and France, united in a treaty to coordinate civil relief, to reach the cut off islands sooner is set to become a diplomatic issue for the 16-nation Pacific Islands Forum.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff told Television New Zealand here Saturday that his officials had told him there was no other way to get to Tikopia. "I will be seeking new reports," he said.

Australian press reports noted that Canberra's total relief contribution to Tikopia so far of 270,000 dollars (150,000 US) paled in comparison to the 10 million dollars spent rescuing a British sailor in the Southern Ocean in 1997, or nearly six million dollars spent saving French sailor Isabelle Autissier.

France, which initially said it had not been asked for any help, mounted its own mission Friday to establish the fate of Mota Lava which suffered an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale, triggering landslides just four days before Zoe hit.

As it is, the official relief operation to Tikopia from the Solomon Islands capital Honiara has still not reached the island.

The Solomon Islands patrol boat Auki, with a small medical team aboard, is expected to arrive by Sunday and a second ship, Isabella, paid for by New Zealand and Australia, will arrive Monday.

Tikopia has a history of cyclones and people mostly survive by living in caves. But the after effects can be deadly.

In the early 1950s over 200 islanders died in the resulting famine and a similar disaster was narrowly avoided with outside private help following Cyclone Tia in 1992.

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