Hopes remain Fiji will still make Forum summit

Transcript

The subject of Fiji, which has dominated Pacific Island Forum summits every year since 2006, will continue this year after the country's leader announced he will not attend.

Prime minister Frank Bainimarama has been invited but says he is not going because New Zealand and Australia will be there.

Don Wiseman from Radio New Zealand International has more:

The Pacific Islands Forum is the pre-eminent regional political agency, bringing together 16 nations, including Australia and New Zealand. Fiji had been suspended from the body but re-admitted last year after the first democratic elections in eight years were held. However they are yet to fully re-engage. Fiji had already indicated it wanted New Zealand and Australia out of the body, saying they could be donors or members but not both. Alternatively it said other donors could be added, including China, with whom Fiji has formed a tight relationship during the years it was isolated. Our attempts to seek more detail from Mr Bainimarama have gone unanswered but the opposition leader in Fiji, Ro Teimumu Kepa, says he is just sulking because the metropolitan countries led opposition to his coup in 2006.

RO TEIMUMU KEPA: In my view that is very childish behaviour because the two countries have assisted us long before 2006, in terms of the aid packages that they have provided for us; in terms of the assistance they have given us in the past and we have seen that when the natural disasters happen in Fiji.

Auckland University associate professor of Pacific Studies, Damon Salesa, says Fiji, after being excluded from the Forum has found it does not need it as much as before.

DAMON SALESA: They gave him the opportunity to sort of flex his muscle and I guess what we are seeing is he wants something out of this return, and perhaps to be a leader. And we see multiple attempts by Bainimarama to be a regional leader, to claim a place at the forefront for Fiji, which, especially outside of Melanesia is far and away the largest economy.

Earlier this year Australia and Fiji planned a conference in Sydney to discuss what it labelled the regional architecture, or the structure and membership of Pacific bodies. The administrative head of the Forum, its secretary general Dame Meg Taylor, said at time that  such a discussion would be appropriate.  

MEG TAYLOR: Fiji lays down its conditions, well it is a decision for the political leadership. Times have changed and what is it going to mean for us all in the region about membership of all the different organisations. You could ask the same about the SPC [the Secretariat of the Pacific Community]. You have got metropolitan powers that sit on the governing council of the SPC. What does that mean? What is the influence of these powers on the direction of another organisation. So regional architecture to me means regional architecture - looking at the bigger picture and who the players are, and the decisions being made by political leadership and they have to sort this out.

That meeting however fell over, because it appears, it lacked support from the other Forum members. While Australia had been pushing this conciliatory approach with Suva, New Zealand has stressed it has no intention of giving up its membership. The Director of Fiji's Centre for International and Regional Affairs, Richard Herr, says to solve the matter a multilateral approach is needed, particularly input from China.

RICHARD HERR: Insofar as it is part of one of the scenarios that Fiji envisages for solving this problem, one really would like to know whether China wants to be involved in this regional bunfight. Is it willing to take sides?

The prime minister of Tonga says he hopes the other Forum members can encourage Fiji to return to the fold. Akilisi Pohiva says if the small nations stick together they could convince Fiji to stay but he says New Zealand and Australia must remain as members.

AKILISI POHIVA: Tonga respects the independence of every state in the South Pacific. Maybe Fiji has good reason to remain isolated. I still want to see New Zealand and Australia hang on to the Pacific Forum.

Akilisi Pohiva also says any issues around membership should be discussed at the Forum summit and that is the PNG government's view. PNG foreign minister Rimbink Pato says his government is firmly committed to the continued membership of New Zealand and Australia in the regional agency. He says if there are issues they can be fixed from within.

RIMBINK PATO: If Fiji has a particular concern with the PIF [Pacific Islands Forum] or concern with Australia and/or New Zealand, then those are matters that should be raised through the Forum where all of us can make a contribution if we are required to make such a contribution.

Papua New Guinea's foreign minister Rimbink Pato says there is a still a lot of time before the meeting, and his government is hoping Fiji will change its mind and attend.