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Fiji's PM: Military takeover under way
2006-12-04
Fiji's elected leader said Tuesday a military takeover was under way in the South Pacific country as armed troops surrounded his house and other government buildings in a lockdown of the capital. Australian Prime Minister John Howard said he refused a request from Fiji's besieged prime minister Tuesday for "military intervention" to end the coup. New Zealand called the coup an "outrage" and said it was cutting military ties with Fiji, the first international sanctions. Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase said it was not clear who was in control of his tiny country after heavily armed soldiers set up check points around the capital, Suva, and seized official vehicles from government ministers. The prime minister said he was not able to leave his house and go to work because troops took his car. "There are some things that aren't clear," Qarase told the Legend radio network by telephone, when he was asked if he was still in charge. "If the military has completed the takeover, then they are in control. If they have not completed the takeover, then we are still the government of the day." He said he had received information that troops would take him into custody sometime Tuesday, though he said that was unconfirmed. Qarase turned to Australia for help in preventing a full military takeover. "The prime minister of Fiji rang me and asked for Australian military intervention in response to the coup," the Australian prime minister told reporters. "I indicated to him that that would not be possible." Earlier, about 40 troops carrying semiautomatic rifles set up guard posts around the prime minister's house on Tuesday, but left in trucks after about an hour. "There is virtually a coup now taking place," Qarase told New Zealand's National Radio. He again refused to meet military commander Commodore Frank Bainimarama's key demand that he resign, saying it would be illegal to quit under threat of ouster. Qarase said President Ratu Josefa Iloilo had conveyed a message to him that he should give in to other demands from Bainimarama or resign. Qarase said he expected to meet the president later Tuesday. Bainimarama wants the government to kill legislation that would grant pardons to conspirators in a 2000 coup, and eliminate other bills he says unfairly favor indigenous Fijians. He has demanded the police tactical unit be disbanded, and that sedition investigations against senior military officers be dropped. Qarase has offered to suspend the contentious bills, but says he cannot agree to any demands that go outside the law. Bainimarama visited the president briefly on Tuesday but there was no word on what they discussed. Qarase said the president could be a key player in determining the outcome of the crisis that has paralyzed the country for weeks. Bainmarama's strategy appeared to be to pressure Qarase to resign or create an environment in which Iloilo could declare the government unable to rule -- a measure allowed under the constitution. Such an outcome could avoid the international censure and possible sanctions that would come from a military takeover. New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark on Monday said Bainimarama had been warned that international sanctions would follow if he staged a coup. Clark told Parliament on Tuesday that military ties were being suspended and senior military officers and their families would be banned from traveling to New Zealand. "The whole way in which the commander is mounting his coup is to get the prime minister to do his job for him, to get him to resign," Clark told reporters later. "This is an outrage what is happening in Fiji today." Soldiers loyal to Bainimarama disarmed the police on Monday. "They have strangled the police force -- they've neutralized them in terms of arms and ammunition and now they are strangling the government machinery today," Qarase said. Bainimarama has been threatening to "clean up" the government for weeks and he said the soldiers had emptied two police armories Monday "to ensure that police weapons are not used against the military." Ministers on Tuesday morning came in small numbers to Qarase's house for meetings, in a gesture that the government was clinging to power. Checkpoints manned by heavily armed soldiers were in place at government buildings in central Suva and at key road intersections on Tuesday -- at one about a dozen troops manned a machine gun on a mound facing busy traffic. Police in vehicles were patrolling the streets as well. Fiji, with about 900,000 people, is among the richest and most developed in the South Pacific, attracting up to 400,000 tourists a year to resorts on idyllic beaches mostly in the west, away from Suva. A coup would be the fourth in 19 years for the country. The military twice grabbed power in 1987 to ensure political supremacy for indigenous Fijians among a population that includes a large ethnic Indian minority. Gunmen angry that those advantages were being eroded seized Parliament in a 2000 coup that brought Qarase, a moderate nationalist, to power in a deal brokered by Bainimarama. Qarase has since won two elections but his relations with the military commander have long since soured. On Tuesday, Qarase told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio: "I am sitting at home and I hope to go to work. What happens after that, I don't know ... If the coup is completed, then, of course, I come from one of the small islands, I will just have to pack up and go home."
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