Fiji calls for urgent meeting with Key, Rudd 

Source: ONE NewsFrank Bainimarama

Fiji's military leader has called for an urgent meeting with the leaders of New Zealand and Australia over its expulsion from the Pacific Forum.

Commodore Frank Bainimarama's said that John Key and Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd do not understand the situation in Fiji.

He says the international community should quit pressuring Fiji to hold an election next year.

Fiji's deadline for naming an election date expires on Friday and Fiji will be booted out if it doesn't do so.

There are concerns that if suspended, Fiji may get isolated by its neighbours.

Green MP Keith Locke is worried the suspension is going to mean efforts by Pacific leaders to resolve the crisis in Fiji will come to an end.

He's calling for what he calls a 'stick and carrot' approach, whereby the expulsion is the stick, and countries continuing dialogue with Commodore Frank Bainimarama's regime is the carrot.

Fiji was plunged into fresh political crisis this month after the president reappointed Bainimarama as interim prime minister, less than two days after a court ruled his 2006 coup and subsequent government was illegal.

Bainimarama, who has ruled out elections until 2012 after earlier promising a poll this year, immediately imposed emergency restrictions, including sending troops and police into media and government offices to gag opposition to his reform plans.

Fiji's suspension could splinter the Pacific Forum, whose smaller island nations have a history of non-interference in each others affairs in a brand of diplomacy dubbed the "Pacific Way".

The UN has already barred Fijian soldiers from future peacekeeping missions, which provide a lucrative source of income for the military with around 2,000 troops on blue helmet duties in the Sinai, Iraq and Sudan.

Fiji, a former British colony, has suffered four coups and a military mutiny since 1987, fuelled by tensions between indigenous Fijians and economically powerful ethnic Indians.