Politics
Where next for the Forum?
Niue, Fiji fight to host Island leaders in 2001.
This year will mark the Pacific Islands Forum's 30th anniversary and its 16 members want to make a great splash of it. So United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Anan and Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon will be invited to the party. But to where? Niue wants it to be Niue. Fiji wants it to be Fiji. New Zealand's prime minister, Helen Clark, is sniffing that she won't go if the meeting is held in currently undemocratic Fiji.
The Australians are being pointedly non-committal, but Prime Minister John Howard says, "there are difficulties for Australia if it's Fiji." That's their problem, said a Fiji delegate. "They'll just be excluding themselves."
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Unable to agree on a venue at Tarawa last November, the Forum passed the buck to the current Forum chairperson, President Teburoro Tito, of Kiribati. He says he'll sound the chaps out over the next two months and then make a decision himself if he can't round up a consensus.
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Fiji delegation sources claimed to have the backing of 12 of the Forum's members for a Fiji meeting, the enemy identified as Australia, New Zealand and Samoa. Fiji says it was its turn to host the Forum in 1998 but it deferred to the Marshall Islands and then to Palau and Kiribati.
It wants to land the 2001 meeting since the Forum's Secretariat is located in Suva and a large conference chamber opened there two years ago has yet to be the place of a full heads of government meeting.
It also wants the prestige of having the United Nations Secretary-General drop in and also do the Australians and New Zealanders in the eye in retaliation for their cold shoulders since the coup of May.
Going by the accepted rules the Forum rotates through forum countries in alphabetical order. That's what was confirmed at Tarawa. And going by that rule, said President Tito, Nauru should land the next meeting.
Fiji claims it's all a New Zealand plot, with the argument from Wellington that Niue would be a fine place for the Forum meeting to be next year since it will be the centenary of Niue's political association with New Zealand. Fiji's reaction is: How many bedrooms does Niue have? Not nearly enough for the average Forum conference.
