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Frank Bainimarama - Source: ONE News -
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Fiji has ordered envoys from New Zealand and Australia, its two biggest neighbours, to return home within 24 hours, accusing them of interfering in its internal affairs.
The self-appointed leader Commodore Frank Bainimarama says he has ordered the expulsions because Australia and New Zealand have interfered with Fiji's judiciary and the travel of new judges from Sri Lanka.
"It is for these reasons ladies and gentleman that I have told
the ministry for foreign affairs to issue communications to the
Australia and New Zealand governments that their respective heads
of missions have to be recalled within 24 hours," he told a news
conference in Suva.
"I have also informed them that our high commissioner in Australia
is to be recalled with immediate effect."
The Foreign Minister Murray McCully has confirmed that New Zealand's Acting Head of Mission in Fiji has been ordered out of the country.
"Firstly the Australian High Commissioner and then New Zealand's Acting Head of Mission were called in by the head of Foreign Affairs in Fiji and told that they would be formally notified tomorrow that they had been declared Personna Non Grata," McCully says.
"The move follows a series of threats from the interim regime over recent days in relation to the effect that travel sanctions are having on members of the Fijian judiciary."
McCully says the government will now consider the appropriate steps to take in response to the expulsion.
Fiji has suffered four coups and a bloody military mutiny since 1987.
It was plunged into a fresh crisis in April after the president reappointed coup leader Frank Bainimarama as prime minister, less than two days after a court ruled the military leader's 2006 coup and subsequent government was illegal.
Australia and New Zealand, two of Fiji's major aid donors and trading partners, have been critical of Bainimarama and have called on him to hold fresh elections as soon as possible.
In September, the Commonwealth suspended Fiji after the nation failed to meet a deadline for opening talks on a return to democracy.
Bainimarama, who had promised an election this year, has now ruled it out until 2014.
Read the full statement from Commodore Frank Bainimarama
