SYDNEY (The Australian / Australian Associated Press / Pacific Media Watch): Australia will need to see real change in Fiji before it considers lifting sanctions on those responsible for the 2006 coup and senior interim government appointees, Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said yesterday.
Rudd told Radio Australia that while the lifting of Public Emergency Regulations was welcome, more concrete changes are needed.
"What we have is a whole pattern of behaviour on behalf of the regime towards its church leaders, trade union leaders, political opponents and the media," he said.
Fiji's Foreign Minster Ratu Inoke Kubuabola yesterday hit back at Rudd's comments, saying the lifting of the emergency laws and bringing consultations forward to next month had been done based on Fiji's internal assessments and needs, not out of a desire to have Australian sanctions eased.
Kubuabola said the Australian policy of isolating Fiji had failed.
"Minister Rudd's 'wait and see' policy and ever-changing demands seem to reflect his inability to formulate a meaningful policy on Fiji, and are not seen as useful either in Fiji or elsewhere," he said.
Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama drew rare - albeit cautious - international praise earlier this month when he announced his intention to lift draconian regulations that have been in place since April 2009.
But his announcement now appears to have been little more than a publicity stunt, as he enacted new laws giving him many of the same powers.
The Australian government's Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs, Richard Marles, said the move had dashed his hopes that Commodore Bainimarama - who seized power in a 2006 coup - was ready to start restoring democracy.
"There has been a history in Fiji since 2006 of the interim regime making promises and then not honouring them.
"We are just not seeing the kind of actions that we would want to see if we were to have any confidence at all that we were witnessing a return to democracy in Fiji."
The regime had to be judged on its actions, not its words, he said.
The new laws did not leave him with much hope that the regime's planned consultations for a new constitution - scheduled to begin next month - would be credible. "We look to that consultation process now with a great deal of concern," he said.
"It will only be credible if it does involve the full political spectrum in Fiji. And it will be very plain for all of us to see whether that consultation is fair dinkum or not."
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