Rabuka plays down Bainimarama's Fiji coup role accusations

2:00 PM

Sitiveni Rabuka has refused to comment on accusations made today by the country's military commander Frank Bainimarama.

A Fiji Daily newspaper reported that Commander Bainimarama blamed the Council of Chiefs for the May Coup headed by George Speight.

Bainimarama said the chiefs were saying one thing in public and another in private, and until they were united the current instability would continue.

However, Sitiveni Rabuka said he did not want the public to think that there was any conflict between him and the commander, as his party had appointed the Commander to his position.

Earlier this week, local media reported that rebel soldiers shot loyalist troops at point blank range during last Thursday's mutiny in which eight people were killed.

Reports of brutal retaliation by loyalist soldiers against the rebels have been denied by the military.

But Fiji Human Rights Commissioner Justice Sailosi Kepa has said he would investigate how five rebels died.

Local media ran front-page stories this week with eyewitness accounts of the fierce gun battle inside Suva's Queen Elizabeth Barracks.

The Fiji Sun newspaper said one soldier was shot by rebels at point blank range while taking a lunchtime nap. It said another was shot at point blank range as he worked on his computer.

"Sources said the military later cleaned his blood from the computer," the Fiji Sun said.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Canberra had learned three regular soldiers had been shot in "cold blood" by the mutineers.

He said it appeared five rebels who died in the mutiny had been killed by soldiers "in a fairly brutal way" in retaliation for the deaths of their comrades.

Reports also emerged of how a rebel soldier defied an order to kill two fellow officers at the height of the battle.

"I should be in the mortuary if everything went as planned," Major Niko Bukarau, who escaped execution, told Fiji's Daily Post newspaper.

Members of the elite Counter Revolutionary Warfare (CRW) unit which staged last Thursday's mutiny backed a coup in May by failed businessman George Speight which toppled Fiji's first ethnic Indian prime minister, Mahendra Chaudhry.

Three soldiers loyal to military commander Frank Bainimarama and five rebels died in the battle and 20 others including some civilians were wounded in cross fire.

Fiji's military are still hunting about 10 rebel soldiers still on the run. Interim Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase has called for the rebels to give themselves up.

Yesterday, the treason case against George Speight was further adjourned to November 23.

- IRN and REUTERS