KEY POINTS:
Fiji failed to produced an election timetable at a special meeting of Pacific Foreign Ministers in Auckland yesterday but it indicated it could be ready to produce one next month.
The ministers of the Pacific Islands Forum established a Ministerial Contact Group, including Foreign Minister Winston Peters, to monitor progress towards the election and to offer future dialogue with Fiji.
Such a group is a step up from the groups of officials that have been working on returning Fiji to democracy.
The fact that the ministers have described it as a vehicle for dialogue and did not discount visiting Fiji, marks quite a shift in the forum's attitude to Fiji of greater engagement.
The Pacific ministers are also giving greater weight to the efforts of former Governor-General Sir Paul Reeves to call broad political talks in Fiji that would include coup leader and military commander Frank Bainimarama and the Prime Minister he overthrew, Laisenia Qarase.
Sir Paul will return there for a third time at the end of next month.
Fiji's military-appointed Foreign Minister, Ratu Epeli Nailatikau, told the ministers in closed session that Fiji would meet its election commitment, Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said at a press conference.
The election commitment was given by military chief and Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama at the Tonga Pacific summit last October.
A detailed timetable for election preparation would be considered by the Fiji interim Cabinet in the second week of April and given to the forum once the Cabinet approved it, a communique released yesterday says.
And it says an elections supervisor will be finalised this week.
Mr Peters said the ministers had to enter the process as optimists "and give it our best shot as long term friends and neighbours of Fiji".
"We want to ensure that we have everything we possibly can within reason to facilitate fair and free and open elections."
But Mr Smith said that while there had to be optimism, there was also scepticism among the ministers about Fiji's lack of preparedness for the elections.
There was also concern that the interim Government saw its so-called People's Charter as more important than an election - the charter being Mr Bainiamarama's alternative constitution.
Mr Smith said there was a concern that the charter process "might be used either as a distraction from the significance of holding an election or to delay, defer or not hold an election."
The establishment of the ministerial contact group reflected the seriousness with which the forum viewed those concerns.
Asked if the ministerial contact group might visit Fiji, Mr Smith said:
"We want Sir Paul Reeves to be given a further opportunity so we don't see that occurring in the first instance but we don't discount it as something that, in appropriate circumstances, if we were satisfied that Fiji was making genuine progress, it is not something that we would discount."
Mr Smith said Fiji has travel bans.
"They complained about it and we said that we weren't proposing to change it unless and until they showed substantial progress towards the conduct of holding a full, free and fair election."
Mr Smith said Fiji had complained about the travel bans applied by Australia and New Zealand Pacific to members of the the Government, the military, key officials and their families.
Mr Peters said issues of media freedom had been raised with the Fiji delegation but he then attacked the Herald's right to run an article yesterday which featured a tirade from Fiji's Human Rights Commission chairwoman, Shaista Shameem, against Mr Peters, which was her response to opinion piece Mr Peters wrote for the Herald.
"With respect, if we talk about media freedom let's be fair about the proper use of it."
