29 Apr 2011

Commonwealth continues Fiji suspension

10:16 am on 29 April 2011

Australia's foreign minister Kevin Rudd says the Commonwealth has upheld Fiji's suspension from the 53-nation group over its failure to embrace political reform.

Fiji was suspended from the Commonwealth in September 2009 when military ruler Commodore Frank Bainimarama, who seized power in a 2006 coup, refused to bow to demands to hold elections.

Rudd says that a meeting of the nine-member Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group in London agreed that the South Pacific island nation would continue to be frozen out.

He says the Commonwealth had seen no measurable change by Fiji's military regime.