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Exclusive Military Zone Looms around Fiji's Parliament
Fiji's army will within 24 hours declare an "exclusive military zone" sealing off the country's parliament where the leaders of an attempted coup are holding 27 hostages, including the elected prime minister, military sources said Sunday in Suva.
A decree was being readied giving the army the right to temporarily acquire any land or building, restrict essential services such as supplies of food, electricity and water, and control entry and exit to the area.
The zone, designed to "force them to come to their senses," will be under the command of Colonel Viliame Seruvakula.
"What we are doing is to isolate the security sensitive area so that the military can control the area, to let the rest of society carry on as normal," a military source said.
People will be given 48 hours to move out and the military said the safety of anyone remaining in the exclusion area cannot be guaranteed.
The official residencies of the French and American ambassadors are within the zone.
However the military says the "necessities of life" will be made available to those inside parliament.
Failed businessman George Speight and a handful of special forces soldiers seized parliament on May 19 and have held prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry, his cabinet and ruling MPs at gunpoint ever since.
Speight claims to be acting in the name of indigenous Fijians, whose resentment of comparative ethnic Indian wealth was directed at the country's first ethnic Indian leader, Chaudhry.
The military suspended civilian government and declared martial law on May 29 after Speight's supporters rioted through the capital Suva.
Most of Speight's demands have been met, including the tearing up of the 1997 constitution allowing rule by non-indigenous Fijians and Chaudhry's sacking, as well as an amnesty for him and his men.
But the crisis has dragged on as the coup leader continues to argue over the make-up of any future government and issues further, sometimes contradictory, demands.
On Sunday, the military sources said the army was likely to name by the middle of the week a cabinet-style ruling executive headed by banker Laisenia Qarase as prime minister and civil servant Savenaca Narube as finance minister.
No ethnic Indians were on the list of ministers^The army sources said that as well as increasing pressure on Speight to end the crisis, the exclusion zone was needed to ensure "those people are contained so that (the administration) can get on with its work."
Earlier, spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Filipo Tarakinikini said the military remained "determined to resolve the crisis in a peaceful manner."
"We continue to maintain that the door for negotiations is still open," he said.
Meanwhile former prime minister and two times coup leader Sitiveni Rabuka was quoted in the Sunday Times here as saying there were other key players behind the takeover of the the Chaudhry government.
"I don't think that Speight was the mastermind behind the coup," he said. "I think he is just one of the players. The real players are remaining faceless in the background."
He also dismissed Speight's supporters as people who had failed to compete in a multi-racial society.
"Those who want things easy have gone his way. They don't want to be competitive."
Speight, he added, had lost any coherent direction.
"He has lost the plot. Right now he is trying to hang on to every bit of straw that floats by. He is living in a bubble and very soon that bubble will burst."
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