Fiji ‘cold shoulder’

Press, 28 July 1987, Page 28

Fiji ‘cold shoulder’

NZPA-AAP Sydney Fiji would no longer seek Australian companies and investment, according to former Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara. Speaking on the Business Sunday television programme in Sydney, Ratu Mara also criticised the Australian and New Zealand High Commissioners to Fiji, accusing them of giving their governments wrong information about his role in the May 14 coup. “What relations we had with Australia are now, as far as I am concerned, out the window,” he said. He said the two High Commissioners in Fiji were not serving their countries well and he questioned why they were still in Fiji. Ratu Mara said he had just returned from a visit to several A.S.E.A.N. countries to find alternate sources of investment and imports to replace those presently coming from Australia and New Zealand. “They (Australia and New Zealand) are not the only investors in the world,” he said. “We thought we had friends where that invest- , ment came from —jji was ■

quite clear overnight that we didn’t have lasting friends,” he said. However, Ratu Mara’s view on finding replacement sources of investment and imports were challenged by the governor of the Reserve Bank of Fiji,. Savenaca Siwatbau. He said for the “foreseeable future” Fiji would have to “maintain our close links for trade and investment with Australia, and New Zealand.” He also said that any large scale emigration of people from Fiji would not be in the best interests nf Fili.