Pacific fights to reclaim its shattered idyllic image

By Paul Tait

SYDNEY (Reuters): The Pacific has made a tentative start this year in attempts to redress the damage done by coups, mutiny and revolt to its idyllic image as a tropical paradise.

"The Pacific is no longer pacific -- if it ever was," said Brij Lal, the University of the South Pacific's regional expert.

Political crisis in Fiji, long-standing tribal hatreds in the Solomon Islands and secessionist rumblings in Papua New Guinea's Bougainvillea island all still threaten the Pacific's future.

Foremost among them is Fiji, where legal wrangling continues as the palm-fringed island nation's court system struggles to clean up after a coup.

Fiji was plunged into chaos last May when nationalist gunmen led by George Speight, a failed businessman, stormed parliament and took hostage the government of Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry.

The hostage drama which played out over the following 56 days saw the downfall of Chaudhry, the racially divided country's first ethnic Indian leader, and condemned Fiji to a future of political uncertainty.

"The genie is out of the bottle," said Lal, who helped draft Fiji's multi-racial 1997 constitution which allowed Chaudhry's election but was thrown out with the abrasive Chaudhry.

A military-backed interim government was installed in place of Chaudhry's coalition of ethnic Indians and indigenous Fijians, but that government has been ruled illegal by Fiji's High Court.

The next big test for Fiji comes on Feb. 19, when a decision is expected on an appeal by the interim government of Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase against the High Court's ruling.

"I think Feb. 19 is very important, I think that's where we'll see if the dogs of war are unleashed or if we have sanity returning to Fiji," Lal told Reuters by telephone from Suva.

Speight and his key aides are held on the prison island of Nukulau off the capital Suva. He will appear in court later this month for a hearing to decide whether he stands trial for treason.

Support for Speight's cause of promoting indigenous Fijian rights at the expense of the economically powerful Indian minority is never far from the surface in Fiji.

And Fiji's fractured military, one of its most revered institutions, faces a test of its unity after a failed mutiny in November by members of the same elite unit which backed Speight.

Eight soldiers died in the mutiny at the main army barracks in Suva and seven others were wounded in the attempt to topple military commander Frank Bainimarama.

Thirty-nine soldiers now face court-martial hearings.

"What will be the implication of that for the morale of the rest of the troops?" Lal asked.

A ceasefire of sorts has been established in the Solomon Islands, where a "copycat coup" in June and renewed fighting in a decades-old land rights dispute between rival ethnic islanders led to the downfall of Prime Minister Bartholomew Ulufa'alu.

Rival groups from Guadalcanal and Malaita islands have begun handing in their weapons after a peace deal was brokered in Australia for a conflict stretching back to the migration of Malaitans to Guadalcanal after World War II.

Fiji and the Solomon Islands were foremost in the minds of South Pacific leaders who rejoiced last October when they ended their annual forum on the tiny island of Kiribati with the signing of a declaration aimed at ending regional instability.

The so-called Biketawa Declaration sets out measures for forum members, including Australia and New Zealand, to censure states which fail to deal with internal instability.

"What the countries of the Pacific...are all saying is if there is a problem in one of our countries, we're no longer going to do nothing about it," Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said during a swing through the Pacific in December.

"There is now under the Biketawa Declaration some capacity to trigger...certainly political assistance and intervention."

Lal argues that such declarations are essentially toothless because they are distant attempts by regional "chiefs" to influence deeply ingrained tribal differences.

"These kinds of conflicts have deep roots in traditional culture, so that what the big men agree upon may not necessarily seep down to the grass roots level," Lal said.

Bougainvillea represents just such a conflict.

Hundreds died in bitter fighting over 10 years between Bougainvillea separatists and Papua New Guinea troops before a ceasefire was signed in 1998.

The secessionists want autonomy followed by a referendum on complete independence in the new year. They walked away from peace talks early in December and have threatened a resumption of fighting if they do not get what they want.

The Bougainvillea revolt looms as a major threat for Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Sir Mekere Morauta.

Morauta has purged his government with the sacking of 10 ministers in recent weeks in an attempt to impose his will on a traditionally fractious parliament, where no leader has served a full term since independence from Australia in 1975.

Lal had one final warning for the region -- it should be aware that Australia, the Pacific's big brother and occasional policeman, is likely to have less time for the region because its conservative government faces elections late in 2001.

"With the elections coming next year I think there will be much more interest and focus on getting things right in Australia," Lal said.