Bavadra denies arms link

Press, 4 June 1988, Page 1

Bavadra denies arms link

PA Wellington Attempts to link the 16-tonne illegal arms cache found in Sydney with the deposed Fijian Prime Minister, Dr Timoci Bavadra, in a bid to discredit him will not work, according to his wife, Kuini.

Mrs Bavadra said from Lautoka yesterday that her husband believed in a non-violent approach to solving Fiji’s political and constitutional problems. “Somebody is on a disinformation campaign to discredit Dr Bavadra but I’m afraid it won’t work. It (the importing of illegal arms into Fiji) goes against the grain of his philosophy. “He has never given any thought,to armed insurrection. It won’t work to malign him and his followers,” she said. The commander of Fiji’s Armed Forces and leader of the coups on May 14 and September 25, 1987, Brigadier Sitiveni Rabuka, was reported yesterday as saying the weapons were part of a foreign-sponsored attempt to destabilise the republic. New Zealand-based members of the Coalition for Democracy in Fiji said the cache was a “plant” to paint the former Bavadra Government as terrorists.

Australian Federal police said they were confident of making an arrest soon in connection with the arms shipment Mrs Bavadra said it was difficult to know who was behind the shipment. Her family and supporters were relying on media reports that the arms were bound for Lautoka. She said local Indians were “laughing it off’ and suggestions that supporters of Dr Bavadra were involved in the arms cache were being treated as a “bit of a

joke. The Fijian police yesterday arrested a man, aged 47, in connection with the arms discovery.

The police also said they had found an empty cargo container which they believed was used to carry an earlier shipment of weapon? into Fiji in April. The : police said the man had been arrested and detained at Lautoka, where the weapons had been destined.

Unofficial sources quoted by the “Fiji Times” said that: the Sydney arms shipment was being linked to two brothers in the Ba area, and that the man Sydney police were seeking, Mohammed Rafiq Khan, was born in Ba and educated in Melbourne.

Khan, who is 43, used the names, Mohammed Rafiq Khan, Peter Khan, Dr Ralph Khan and sometimes Mohammed Rafiq.

He came to prominence in Fiji in 1973 when he established a company, Budget Marketing Corporation, which offered SFS membership cards for the right to buy wholesale goods from the company. But Khan suddenly disappeared with thousands of dollars and his company closed. He was later wanted in New Zealand, Australia, Bermuda, Canada and Fiji on 28 charges. A Fijian police spokesman has described him as “bad news” and in the “big time.”