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Mahendra Chaudhry arrives in Australia |
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July 31, 2000
SYDNEY (AP) - Deposed Fijian Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry arrived in Sydney on Sunday to discuss the crisis in his country with the Australian government. Chaudhry was scheduled to meet Monday with Prime Minister John Howard to bring him up to date. Speaking on his arrival in Sydney, Chaudhry said he would continue to work for the restoration of democracy in Fiji but tentatively ruled out forming a government in exile. "We've decided that we'll be in the country," he said. A government in exile "is an option that was considered but it is an option that has not been taken as yet," Chaudhry told Australian Broadcasting Corp. Radio. Howard said he would continue to push for the restoration of full democracy in Fiji, which was plunged into crisis by a nationalist coup on May 19. "The Australian government encourages the people of Fiji and those in authority in Fiji to bring about the restoration of full parliamentary democracy and to turn away from a suggestion of a new constitution which discriminates against Fijian people of Indian heritage," Howard told reporters in Sydney. An interim Fijian government was sworn in Friday for a term of about two years while a new constitution was drawn up which discriminates against the ethnic Indian minority and in favor of indigenous Fijians. Chaudhry, Fiji's first ethnic Indian prime minister, was held hostage along with other members of his government for 56 days by armed rebels led by failed businessman George Speight. This week, the country's military cracked down hard on the coup plotters, arresting Speight and hundreds of his supporters. "We welcome the fact that George Speight has been acted against and we see what has occurred in relation to Speight as something of a return to the assertion of constitutional authority and the rule of law," Howard said.
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