KEY POINTS:
New Zealand will need to see "concrete" evidence before it is convinced Fiji is genuinely moving towards democratic elections, Prime Minister Helen Clark says.
Fiji's government said yesterday it was possible "in principle" to hold elections in the first quarter of 2009.
The statement was in response to a recommendation by a joint working party of the Fiji interim government and regional grouping, the Pacific Islands Forum, that elections should be held between November 2008 and March 2009.
But Miss Clark said Fiji's unelected government needed to go much further to convince New Zealand and other countries it was on the road back to democracy.
The statement appeared to have been made under pressure, with Fiji afraid of losing its European Union (EU) aid, she told reporters.
"We're all watching every step of the way. It's one thing to say you're going to do something in principle, it's another to take concrete steps to make it happen."
Miss Clark said the Fiji government had elected to go to the "outer end" of the dates suggested by the report and its statement contained several mixed messages.
"That in itself suggests they are trying to play for time and play people off."
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters today said New Zealand would not be immediately easing sanctions in relation to the statement.
The Government would continue to look for ways to strengthen them in response to the expulsion of the High Commissioner Michael Green, who returned home yesterday.
"What you're hearing is an extraordinary argument -- that by merely announcing that in principle you support democratic elections, then everybody should jump and respond as though they have happened," he said on Radio New Zealand.
"We are simply saying to the Fiji military: hold an election, go back to the barracks and end this process of having a coup every time you don't like what's going on with the elected, mandated government."
Mr Peters later told reporters New Zealand had partly footed the bill for the last election, but would be reluctant to do so again without a guarantee from the military it would not interfere.
He said there was no basis for recent statements by Fiji's attorney general that the country's last elections were not fair.
The military-led appeared to be running a rearguard action to justify its December 2006 coup, he said.
- NZPA
