6 Dec 2010

Call for United Nations to get involved in liaising with Pacific neighbours

12:23 pm on 6 December 2010

A New Zealand businessman with extensive interests in Fiji is calling for the United Nations to be brought in to help resolve the strained relations between the interim regime and most of its regional neighbours.

Owen Glenn has been involved in Fiji for more than 25 years with transport businesses and a resort on Malolo Island.

He says the Fiji economy is struggling, unemployment is rife and foreign investors are pulling out as they worry about political instability threatening their financial returns.

He says he made the suggestion of UN involvement to New Zealand Prime Minister John Key recently.

"There has to be a different way of approaching it. And sometimes you know you've got to take the protagonists off the board and use a third party that has no axe to grind and's answerable only to the United Nations rather than to any country. And I mean pick that person from somewhere neutral, who hopefully will catch the ear of all the parties concerned and come up with a blueprint of a solution."

Mr Glenn says the measures imposed by New Zealand and Australia to pressure Fiji to hold elections haven't worked and only hurt the ordinary people who're unable to rise up and change the government.