China urged to speak up over regional "bunfight"

Transcript

China has been urged to speak up over a regional tussle which threatens to see Fiji remain in self-imposed exile from the Pacific Islands Forum.

Fiji's suspension from the Forum was lifted last year after it held elections but the Prime Minister, Frank Bainimarama, says he will not attend the September gathering of the region's leaders unless Australia and New Zealand leave the organisation.

Suva wants other development partners like China to be members if New Zealand and Australia insist on staying.

The Director of Fiji's Centre for International and Regional Affairs, Richard Herr, told Sally Round the impasse cannot be solved by Australia and New Zealand alone.

RICHARD HERR: The Prime Minister of Fiji has certainly thrown down the gauntlet. He has signalled by his determination not to attend, unless his conditions are met, that he will not be attending this forum because the conditions he set can't be met in time for the September forum if all the requirements of disengaging from the Pacific Islands Forum were to be met. The second aspect of that of course is that it's not something that Australia and New Zealand can easily do and resolve by simply picking up the gauntlet themselves. The Forum is a multilateral arrangement, it's not a bilateral one and all the rest of regional states have a stake in this matter but I think the problem at the moment is that Australia and New Zealand created the problem when they tried to use the Forum as a kind of nightstick to police Fiji after the coup into correct behaviour and that obviously has so galled Prime Minister Bainimarama that he's not willing to forgive and let go of it.

SALLY ROUND: This is despite overtures from Canberra to have talks on the issue - there were talks planned in Sydney which seem to have been postponed - has there been a breakdown on this with Australia?

RH:  Oh yes and that was part of the problem. I mean, again, you'll remember those Sydney talks which were, in my judgement very usefully postponed indefinitely, were bilaterally arranged. The table was set by the two countries, Australia and Fiji and then the rest of the region, as an afterthought,  was going to be invited along, well again that forgets the multilateralism of the Forum. It has treaty obligations built into parts of the relationship as well as the years of practice and experience precedent that exists within the Forum at the leaders' level as a club. All of these things seem to have been lost at least for the moment in terms of demarches on what the way ahead looks like but it all started when the process of reforming the Forum went ahead without Fijian input during the period when Fiji was suspended and Fiji clearly believes, and reasonably so, that it has a right to revisit all of those issues and see them reopened and it's stated how it wants to proceed in reopening those in terms of at least one of the outcomes which is to find Australia and New Zealand are no longer insiders within the family of the Pacific Islands Forum.

SR: So this recent move by Australia, an official going to Suva, that broke down?

RH: Apparently so. It appears that rather than soothing the issue it forced a response, a reaction as to what Fiji would do and that response was what we've seen now over the last couple of days from the prime minister and his view of the way forward.

SR: Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister - Papua New Guinea of course going to be hosting the Pacific Islands Forum later this year - said that he'd issued an invitation to the Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama to attend and the prime minister has come out saying no he's not going to. Could this be seen as a snub to PNG, in their rivalry for leadership in the region?

RH: Possibly. In some ways one has to remember that in this issue Prime Minister Bainimarama has accused Prime Minister O'Neill of acting as a cat's paw for Australia on some of these regional issues, so in some ways Prime Minister O'Neill may just be catching the push back from Fiji on the general issue rather than it being a deliberate snub to Papua New Guinea. But of course PNG might take it as a deliberate snub since the prime minister issued the invitation.

SR: So where to from here then?

RH: It's one of those scrambled eggs now that probably requires an omelette solution. It can't be put together easily and if Fiji doesn't attend this Pacific Islands Forum and if the Pacific Islands Development Forum scheduled to occur before the Pacific Islands Forum meeting occurs creates new demands, new expectations, the egg may be even further scrambled.

SR: What is the significance of Fiji's desire to have China involved in the PIF? Is that the main problem here?

RH: I'm not sure it's the main problem but in so far 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? At the moment it hasn't been, it's been willing to be supportive of the Pacific Islands Development Forum, the potential rival to the Forum, but I'm not sure that it's necessarily willing to buy into it as an alternative to Australia and New Zealand's role in the region. I think it would prefer a partnership arrangement that was mutually agreed and mutually supportive but it is one of the things that needs to be considered. It's not possible to talk about, if Australia and New Zealand don't leave then China must be brought in. China really has to speak its own mind as to whether it sees that as a viable option for it.