KEY POINTS:
Aid for Kiribati and what to do about Fiji at the Niue Pacific leaders' summit in August were top of Beehive discussions held yesterday between Prime Minister Helen Clark and Kiribati President Anote Tong.
Helen Clark said they discussed "the importance of keeping forum unity" on the issue of Fiji, having achieved unity at the Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga last year and at the forum Foreign Ministers meeting on Fiji in Auckland in March.
At the forum in Tonga, Fiji's interim leader and military leader, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, "made a lot of commitments", Helen Clark said.
"But they seem to be being observed more in the breach than anything else and the forum will have to wrestle again with those issues this time," she said.
Fiji has promised to hold elections by the end of next March.
Mr Bainimarama has said a new People's Charter - yet to be put to the vote in a referendum - will have to be in place before the election.
But interim Foreign Minister Ratu Epeli Nailatikau has since said the election will go ahead by the deadline.
The forum's mandate to deal with member countries that abandon democracy was negotiated in Kiribati in 2000, and is called the Biketawa Declaration, named after the island on which it was confirmed.
New Zealand's sanctions include restricting entry to New Zealand of the military and senior Government officials and their families.
But Benedict XVI welcomed Mr Bainimarama at the Vatican last week when he attended the world food security conference in Rome.
Mr Tong and Helen Clark discussed the increased aid New Zealand was giving to Kiribati - from $3.5 million in the present financial year and growing to $6 million in the next.
Helen Clark said they discussed a programme to help the country to deal with overcrowding in South Tarawa where 46,000 lived.
The aid would also provide more support for the Kiribati marine training centre.
The centre was an important institution because its graduates working on boats provided 15 per cent of Kiribati's gross national income.
Mr Tong took part in the United Nation's World Environment Day events hosted last week by New Zealand.
"For me it is like a homecoming."
