SUVA (Pacnews) — Fiji’s ousted Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase has categorically denied calling for military intervention from Australia and New Zealand moments before he was overthrown in a military coup.
He said the efforts of the Fiji police to establish a case to charge him for treason “is really quite unbelievable.”
”I don’t know what sort of evidence they (police) will get to support that evidence,” Qarase said.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard, however, acknowledged receiving a “last minute” call from Qarase requesting “military intervention.”
”To respond to a request for military intervention in a situation like Fiji, it is something that would have been carefully planned,” Howard said on Dec. 8, 2006. “I mean I got this request right at the last minute from (Qarase). Now I understand his position and I have a lot of regard and respect for him.”
”I never issued an invitation to either country for military intervention,” Qarase said. “The cabinet is the decision making body especially in an important issue like that and the question of inviting the intervention from either Australia or New Zealand was never discussed in cabinet, neither was it discussed in the National Security Council.”
Qarase had convened an emergency meeting of the National Council minus its military representatives in the hours leading up to the coup.
But he said he made some “inquires” on whether the assistance Australia and New Zealand could offer Fiji “would include military assistance.”
“As prime minister of the day I had to be sure that all the options available to me, were known to me, because of the very serious situation and the threat of a military takeover from our own military. And that was all I did,” Qarase said.
Howard said he did not send any troops to Fiji “because he did not want “the horror of Australian and Fijian troops firing at each other in the streets of Suva. The Fijian military is quite well-trained, it’s some thousands strong. From a logistic point of view to have mounted some kind of military operation against a resistant Fijian military, and we never contemplated doing that I want to make that very clear; but I just want to extend my answer to deal with the logistic difficulties.”
Howard had said a last minute military intervention “without preparation would have guaranteed very significant Australian causalities” and he was “not prepared to risk the lives of Australian men and women needlessly.”