Monday night, Radio Fiji reported Australia’s foreign affairs minister Stephen Smith (pictured left, with NZ foreign minister Murray McCully) admitted Australia had indeed been lobbying against the meeting. (Photo by Selwyn Manning, courtesy Scoop.co.nz.)

Pacific Scoop:
Report – By Thakur Ranjit Singh.

Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama has accused Australia and New Zealand of working behind the scenes to derail the upcoming Melanesian Spearhead Group meeting scheduled at Natadola Resort, Nadi on 22 and 23 July, 2010.

This comes in the wake of deferment of the scheduled meeting by the Chair of MSG, the Vanuatu Prime Minister Edward Natapei. The deferment is attributed to what Natapei calls an “impasse over Fiji’s hosting and chairmanship of the event needed to be resolved.’ Fiji Sun reported.

Speaking to Fiji Sun from Daeleon, South Korea, Prime Minister Bainimarama expressed his disappointment at the New Zealand and Australia action what he said would result in a destabilisation of relationship between the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) countries. He accused the MSG chairman, Natapei of ‘listening a lot to Australia and New Zealand who are on a mission to dissolve the MSG.”

Bainimarama told Fiji Sun that “Mr Natapei’s call would not do any good towards the relationship of the MSG brothers. Australia and New Zealand are trying to embarrass Fiji by dissolving the MSG. If there is no MSG then MSG leaders will be reluctant to come forward and discuss their issues and problems.”

Commentators on Fiji see this development as a threat to the future of the MSG, the only major regional group where Australia and New Zealand were excluded.

This is what Croz Walsh, former USP academic and publisher of website “Fiji the way it was, is and can be” has to say:

“In addition to the latest about-face by Natapei and the MSG, we have the Australian-PNG meeting in Alotau last week when PNG agreed to two Fiji clauses in their joint communiqué. Then there’s the report that the Australia’s Acting High Commissioner in Suva has been urging MSG countries to boycott the Fiji meeting (and presumably similar actions in Australia and other MSG countries). And Vanuatu’s hosting of the Forum meeting next month. It would be most surprising if there were not a link between these happenings.”

Citing the Editor-in Chief of Island Business, Laisa Taga, Croz Walsh reported this on his website:

Australia actively trying to undermine MSG Plus meeting
Letter from Suva has been reliably told that the Fiji foreign ministry has on two occasions summoned the acting Australian high commissioner Sarah Roberts to appear before the Secretary of Foreign Affairs. This was after the Ministry was told by several heads of missions based in Suva that the Australian envoy had been “attempting to influence them from accepting invitations to the MSG.”

This was again repeated by her in the most recent meeting of the Diplomatic Corps here in Suva.

It is also been alleged that Ms Roberts had invited heads of missions in Fiji to participate in a discussion on possible evacuation scenarios of foreign nationals in the event of political instability.

In the wake of this development Australian Acting High Commissioner to Fiji, Ms Sarah Roberts has been declared persona non grata and told to leave the country, as reported by Radio Fiji News.

Fiji’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Ratu Inoke Kuboubola is reported by Radio Fiji News as saying that the Australian government had been engaged in strategies to undermine Fiji’s sovereignty and weaken the economy, and this had been further highlighted by calling on MSG countries, especially Vanuatu, not to attend the MSG Leaders Summit.

He further added that Australia had no business in the MSG leaders’ summit but had continued to discourage MSG member states from attending the meeting.

Last Night, Radio Fiji reported Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith admitting Australia had indeed been lobbying against the meeting.

Meanwhile, in a strongly worded Editorial, Fiji Sun not only hit back at Australia and New Zealand governments, but their media and journalists as well:

“The politicians and bureaucrats in Canberra and Wellington will see this as a triumph for their continuing efforts to isolate Fiji. Their anti-Fiji news media, such as Fiji Times owners News Limited in Australia and so-called Pacific Islands experts like Michael Field in New Zealand, will trumpet the Fiji isolated line.

“But what it really shows yet again is how much control Canberra and Wellington exert over the South Pacific islands, and how they are willing to use it to bully island nations to get their way, “said Fiji Sun.

Thakur Ranjit Singh is a volunteer at Pacific Media Centre and is a postgraduate student in Communication Studies at AUT.

For more on this issue, see Professor Crosbie Walsh’s opinion piece: Why Did the MSG Leaders Change Their Minds?