Fijian coup leader Voreqe Bainimarama downplayed the likelihood of a confrontation with his critics from Australia and New Zealand this week as he arrived in Tonga yesterday for a regional summit.
The Pacific Islands Forum gathering will be the first time he has faced his foreign detractors since his military takeover last December, but the commodore said he did not expect a diplomatic showdown.
"We are here as leaders and we will conduct ourselves as leaders," he said. "We will tell the forum our doors are open -- we have got nothing to hide."
Australia and New Zealand, which with 14 Pacific island nations make up the Forum, have stridently criticised Bainimarama, who toppled the government of prime minister Laisenia Qarase, which he accused of racism and corruption.
New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark is attending the Forum, but Australian Prime Minister John Howard pulled out on Sunday after announcing the date for a general election back home.
Fiji's self-proclaimed interim prime minister was asked if he was disappointed that Howard would not be in attendance.
"Not really," he told Fijian journalists.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer is taking Howard's place.
The Forum has pressed Bainimarama to hold elections by the end of the first quarter of 2009. He has said he agrees in principle, although he has also said elections would only happen when Fiji was ready.
New Zealand and Australia, along with other countries, have imposed sanctions on Fiji since the coup and called for a speedy return to democracy following elections.
Bainimarama turned down an invitation to join other leaders for dinner with Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon, pleading a prior engagement.
But he said he planned a meeting with McKinnon during the Forum, following a request from the head of the Commonwealth, which has suspended Fiji from membership.
McKinnon said he wants to open a dialogue with Fiji with the aim of encouraging the military regime to call early elections.
Bainimarama justified last year's bloodless coup by saying Qarase's government was corrupt and favored indigenous Fijians over the ethnic Indian minority, which accounts for about 37 percent of the population of 900,000.
The summit is also expected to discuss the future of the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI), which is formally under the control of the forum.
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has complained loudly about Australian dominance, saying his country's sovereignty is being undermined by RAMSI.
Sogavare is boycotting the summit because a Forum review of RAMSI is believed to have strong backing to the mission, which started as an armed intervention in 2003 to end five years of bloody ethnic conflict.
The summit officially opens today and finishes tomorrow.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition