Fiji Military Says No More Concessions

SUVA, Fiji — Under intense pressure from the international community, the head of the military government declared Monday that he will not give any more ground to rebel leader George Speight, who has been holding much of the country’s elected government hostage for more than two weeks.

In a televised address to the nation, Commodore Frank Bainimarama said the European Union had threatened to stop subsidizing Fiji’s sugar cane industry if Speight or his followers play a role in an interim civilian government, as the two sides had been discussing. The sugar industry is the second-largest sector of Fiji’s economy, behind tourism, and would be crippled without the subsidies.

Based in part on that threat, Bainimarama said, he had issued a final offer: amnesty for Speight and his followers in exchange for a release of the hostages and a return of all weapons used in the attempted coup.

Speight angrily turned it down. “I’m very upset. In fact, I’m not pleased,” he told reporters in one of the rambling news conferences that have become nightly occurrences at the Parliament compound where the hostages are being held.

He said he was willing to stay put for as long as it took to make the military commander give in to his demands. “I’m not in a corner,” he said. “Quite the opposite: I believe he’s in a corner.”

Speight said he would not harm the hostages unless the army stormed the compound, adding that the military had assured him that wouldn’t happen. He denied Bainimarama’s assertion that he had demanded a role in a new government. He said he had only demanded that the new government be made up of “people who are committed to the cause of indigenous rights in Fiji.”

Indigenous Fijians, whom Speight claims to represent, make up a bare majority of the population. Ethnic Indians, descendants of indentured servants brought from India by the British a century ago, make up most of the rest, at 44%. The now-deposed prime minister taken hostage, Mahendra Chaudhry, was Fiji’s first prime minister of Indian descent.

Indigenous rights movements have swept the South Pacific in recent years as nations have emerged from the shadow of 19th century colonialism. Ethnic divisions apparently played a role in a coup Monday in the Solomon Islands, where rebels took the prime minister hostage. Fighting between rival factions erupted today.

“Obviously, they took the game plan from George Speight,” said the U.S. ambassador to Fiji, Osman Siddique. However, he and others said there was no indication that the Solomons coup attempt, which grew out of a long-standing conflict, reflected a wave of regional instability.