KEY POINTS:
A team headed by New Zealander Paul Harris has begun work to assess whether democratic elections can be held in Fiji within two years.
The four-member team has been commissioned by the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) to see if the three-year timetable set by Fiji's interim government for elections can be shortened. The last elected government was ousted in a military coup last December.
Mr Harris is a former chief executive of the Electoral Commission in New Zealand. His team is expected to report back to the forum next month.
Fiji's finance minister Mahendra Chaudry told reporters in India last week that while there was pressure from the international community for elections to be held within 18 months to two years, lengthy electoral procedures had to be completed first.
A population census has to be carried out, beginning in July, and provisional electoral boundaries drawn up.
The Indian Government is expected to provide electronic voting machines for the next election, but Semesa Karavaki, recently sacked as Fiji's supervisor of elections, said the machines would only complicate matters for voters.
While electronic voting would ensure the validity of votes and reduce the time taken to declare the successful candidate, there would have to be a major educational exercise in their use.
"We should just make use of the current system, we don't need such machines to complicate matters," he told the Fiji Times.
He said the interim government was just trying to delay the elections by introducing a new system of voting.
A meeting of donor countries to the Pacific held in Washington this month underlined its support for PIF foreign ministers in their call for democratic elections within 18 to 24 months, if not sooner.
The countries, which included the United States, New Zealand, Australia, France and Germany, expressed support for the regional efforts being co-ordinated by the forum to help Fiji return to democracy.
"A number of core partners (donor countries) noted their willingness to offer assistance to support the rapid restoration of democracy in Fiji, including for new elections," a statement issued after their meeting said.
The meeting was held in tandem with the Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders triennial meeting and caused a fracas because the political situation in Fiji, the Solomon Islands and Tonga was discussed by the donor countries.
Representatives from the three countries boycotted the closing session of the leaders' conference, because they were unable to take part in the debate on the political instability in their countries.
"We have travelled all this way to Washington and we don't see any reason why we should not have been invited to the (donors') meeting in which we were being discussed," a Fijian representative said.
Despite the boycott, the permanent secretary to the Fijian prime minister's office, Parmesh Chand, said the US did not lecture Fiji on how to resolve its current impasse, as Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer had done.
"The fact we were invited to the (conference) meeting and in the US for that matter where were given visas to travel reflects the pragmatic approach they have taken. It was kind of the US to do that, demonstrating they are very forward looking," he told the Fiji Times.
Fijian interim prime minister Voreqe (Frank) Bainimarama was not invited to Washington.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Pacific leaders the US was "deeply concerned" about the coup in Fiji.
- NZPA
