Australia to cripple Fiji'if racist win Cabinet post'

Australia to cripple Fiji'if racist win Cabinet post'

SUVA (AFP): Australia threatened on Sunday crippling economic sanctions against Fiji if the leader of its racist coup was appointed to cabinet.

As rival tribal groups failed to break an impasse over the make-up of a new government to replace the ousted administration, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer warned further concessions to rebel leader George Speight would be "preposterous."

Fiji's nominal rulers had already given too much to "Speight and his gang," he said.

Australia, on which Fiji depends upon for about half of its trade, last week announced limited sanctions including cuts to non-humanitarian aid and cancellation of defense cooperation.

The move has been mirrored in Britain and New Zealand, while the United States has vowed to follow Australia's lead, and Fiji has already been suspended from the Commonwealth.

Canberra and the international community have stopped short of the kind of trade bans that would wreck the Fijian economy, with knock-on effects for neighboring South Pacific island economies.

However, Downer told Channel Nine's Sunday program any Fijian government that included Speight could prompt harsher action. "If Mr Speight became a member of the new cabinet I think Australia, New Zealand, Britain, the United States, Japan and others would have to review the measures we've already taken," he said.

"Frankly, it would be completely unacceptable for a terrorist to form part of a government. We couldn't have any part of dealing with a country that included terrorists in its government."

Speight and a group of special forces soldiers seized Fiji's parliament on May 19 and held its elected government, including prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry, hostage for 56 days.

The coup led to the overthrow of Chaudhry, the island's first ethnic Indian prime minister, and the abolition of a 1997 constitution which allowed non-ethnic Fijians political power.

Plans have been drawn up for an apartheid-like state where political power is reserved exclusively for ethnic Pacific Islanders.

The proposals have been made by an interim caretaker government appointed by the army, which declared martial law soon after the crisis began, when Speight's supporters ran riot through the capital Suva, looting and ransacking businesses belonging to ethnic Indians.

Since Chaudhry's release, Speight, the interim government and the army have been locked in talks over the make-up of a post- coup administration.

After excluding ethnic Indians from power, rival tribal groups are now squabbling over who should have dominance.

Speight last week effectively blocked the swearing in of a first proposed new government with threats of civil war, after he objected to the line-up.

He is demanding Fiji's High Commissioner to Malaysia Samanunu Cakobau, grand-daughter of a former king and head of the powerful Fijian Bau clan, be appointed prime minister.

The continuing impasse has produced a power vacuum. The Pacific nation has no effective government and with civil unrest continuing, some observers expect the army to declare martial law once more.

Many of Speight's rebels occupy a school in Kalabu, just outside of Suva. Local media reports say they are terrorizing the area, robbing farmers and market vendors of their produce and forcing people to flee.

On Friday night a group tried to seize a military roadblock nearby in an attempt to cut Suva off from its only airport.

Suva continues to suffer rolling power blackouts as rebels occupy the only hydro-electric station.

On Sunday academic and former trade unionist James Anthony, writing in the Fiji Times, warned political power was increasingly related to the use of force in Fiji.

"Taxpayers' guns under Fijian control have been used twice ostensibly against Indians and now, we might well be entering a new phase of violence: Fijians against each other."