Australia seeks sanctions against Fiji

After Fiji's President Ratu Josefa Iloilo last week repealed the constitution and reinstated military chief Commodore Frank Bainimarama as prime minister, Smith said it was "almost inevitable" Fiji would be ejected from regional groupings and the Commonwealth of former British-ruled nations.

But Australia, the region's biggest economy and aid donor, was not considering additional sanctions on top of travel bans already targeting Bainimarama and other senior members of the coup-installed government, he said.

"We don't want to do anything which adversely impacts on the Fiji people themselves. We're urging the international community to look at what measures the international community can apply," Smith told state radio.

The former British colony has suffered four coups and a military mutiny since 1987, fuelled by tensions between indigenous Fijians and the large and economically powerful ethnic Indian minority.

An appeals court last Friday ruled the 2006 coup that brought the ethnic Fijian Bainimarama to power was illegal, prompting Iloilo to sack the judiciary and usher in new military controls on the movement of people and curb press freedoms.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully described Fiji as a military dictatorship, with Wellington considering trade sanctions after three foreign journalists were expelled from the country.

"We have got an effectively self-appointed dictator who has abrogated the constitution, sacked the judges, tried to suppress media freedom and clamped down on the liberties of citizens. It doesn't get much worse than that," McCully said.

Fijian news outlets have been barred from publishing news that would cause "disorder" or "public alarm," while the security forces have been deployed to news bureaux throughout the country to prevent news critical of the government.

The Fiji Times, the country's major newspaper, has in recent days been published with blank spaces in place of stories censored by the government.

Smith said Australia was not considering any military intervention in Fiji, where the government's interim Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum told local radio the security situation was still peaceful.

"There is no chaos, there is nothing happening in the streets," said Sayed-Khaiyum.

Events in Fiji have been widely condemned overseas, including by the United Nations and the Commonwealth, which has called for a special meeting to discuss Fiji, amid talk of sanctions.

Ethnic Fijians dominate the country's military. The abrogated 1997 constitution was intended to ease ethnic tensions, but instead fuelled a decade of political instability after an ethnic Indian was elected prime minister in 1999.

(Reporting by Rob Taylor; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)