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SUVA - Sustained gunfire was heard coming from inside Fiji's main military barracks on Saturday, witnesses said, four days after the army overthrew the south Pacific island nation's elected government.
A Reuters witness and local residents heard gunfire erupt in the Queen Elizabeth barracks on a hilltop overlooking Fiji's capital Suva and said it continued for about 30 minutes.
Fiji military spokesman Major Neumi Leweni had confirmed there was firing inside the barracks but said it was an unscheduled shooting exercise and that people should not be alarmed, Reuters said.
However, the report was disputed by the AFP news agency which said residents around the barracks denied hearing gunfire and that soldiers were playing a game of cricket.
The barracks has no rifle range and firing practice is normally done at a range on the other side of the city.
Soldiers manning roadblocks around the barracks were calm and traffic was moving freely.
Divisions over Fiji's military takeover have widened as powerful traditional chiefs and politicians split on whether to support coup.
The military received a further blow late on Friday when the Commonwealth, an association of mostly British former colonies, suspended Fiji's membership.
Deposed Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase remained defiant, calling on bureaucrats not to cooperate with the military. He appeared to concede his government was finished but, said he would return to the capital Suva next week.
"To be realistic, all the privileges of the prime minister have been taken away from me so ... I'll be moving around as an ordinary person," Qarase told local television from his village on Vanuabalavu island in Fiji's remote east.
Mr Qarase predicts there will be demonstrations against the takeover, but military commander Frank Bainimarama says his troops will quickly put down any opposition."
Commodore Bainimarama has been systematically cleaning out Qarase's administration and on Friday dozens of his troops raided the Finance Ministry and the offices of Ballu Khan, an IT and communications entrepreneur, taking away files and computers.
Mr Qarase was ousted on Tuesday after a year-long power struggle with Commodore Bainimarama, who accused his government of being corrupt and too soft on the perpetrators of Fiji's last coup in 2000. It was Fiji's fourth coup in 20 years.
Fiji's Great Council of Chiefs (GCC), the traditional authority which represents 14 chiefly provinces and appoints the president, opposes the takeover as undemocratic and illegal.
Commodore Bainimarama has been trying to get the council to meet to endorse the reinstatement of President Ratu Josefa Iloilo, the first step towards naming an interim government.
But chiefs have resisted and hundreds of villagers have blocked the entrance to Tavualevu village, home of GCC Chairman Ratu Ovini Bokini, vowing to stop soldiers entering.
Fiji's Law Society warned members not to advise the military because the takeover was illegal. Some members of the teachers association protested at a Friday meeting, holding up placards that read "Stop raping democracy" and "Fiji, My Heart Bleeds for You".
One widely respected chief, Ratu Epeli Ganilau, has offered himself as a mediator between the military and the GCC.
"We all know it (the coup) is illegal but it is the lesser of two evils," said Ratu Epeli, a former head of the military and ex-GCC chairman who appointed Commodore Bainimarama military chief in 1999.
Some observers saw his mediation offer as a thinly disguised bid to become president or head of the caretaker government.
Christian churches, which represent more than 80 per cent of indigenous Fijians, took out large newspaper advertisements on Friday to spell out their opposition to Bainimarama.
"We are deeply convinced that the move now taken by the commander and his advisers is the manifestation of darkness and evil," Reverend Tuikilakila Waqairatu, president of the Fiji Council of Churches, said in the advertisement.
Fiji's first Indian prime minister, Mahendra Chaudhry, who was toppled in 2000, said he could work with the military to restore democracy but would not serve in a military-appointed government.
"It does not mean that we cannot use this adversity that has struck us to negotiate a better future for the people of Fiji and for a stable and democratic arrangement," Mr Chaudhry told New Zealand radio.
The coup has brought international condemnation, with Australia, New Zealand, Britain and the United States imposing economic and defence sanctions.
In London, the 53-nation Commonwealth - which not have a formal charter but promotes peace, democracy, the rule of law, equality for all - suspended Fiji's membership
"Fiji's military regime should forthwith be suspended from the councils of the Commonwealth," the group's Secretary-General Don McKinnon said in a statement.
Don McKinnon, who said he hoped to travel to Fiji in the near future to press for a return to democracy, said the suspension decision had been taken unanimously by a meeting of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group.
- REUTERS
