$Unique_ID{COW01305} $Pretitle{294D} $Title{Fiji Chapter 4. Foreign Relations and Security} $Subtitle{} $Author{Stephan B. Wickman} $Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army} $Subject{fiji new rfmf forces pacific australia security un zealand nations} $Date{1984} $Log{} Country: Fiji Book: Oceania, An Area Study: Fiji Author: Stephan B. Wickman Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army Date: 1984 Chapter 4. Foreign Relations and Security Fiji has rivaled Papua New Guinea for leadership of the island states of Oceania. Fiji has been the home of the South Pacific Bureau for Economic Cooperation-the secretariat of the South Pacific Forum-and the University of the South Pacific since their inception (see Appendix B). Mara represented the South Pacific Forum in 1982 during negotiations with France over the status of New Caledonia. He has also led his country in active participation in the organizations of the United Nations (UN), including its peacekeeping forces. Fiji has maintained especially close relations with Australia, New Zealand, and Tonga. Australia and New Zealand were its major trading partners, and among all Pacific nations Fiji benefited most from the South Pacific Area Regional Trade and Economic Cooperation Agreement (SPARTECA-see Glossary), effected with these countries in 1981. SPARTECA has created F $10 million to F $15 million in duty-free exports for Fiji each year. Relations with the other Melanesian countries were good but not always warm. Vanuatu, disturbed by Fiji's pro-Western stance and loose affiliation with the Polynesian countries, has even proposed creating a regional organization of Melanesian states that would exclude Fiji (see Vanuatu, this ch.). In the rivalry between the superpowers, Fiji has avowed its neutrality. Its refusal to enter into the Nonaligned Movement has been defended on the grounds that that organization was tilting toward the Soviet Union. Fiji's own political and economic choices, however, have made it seem more sympathetic to the Western nations and Japan, a fact that neatly coincided with its traditionally warm relations with Britain and the Commonwealth of Nations. Fiji's national motto, "Fear God and serve the Queen," was not a quaint anachronism. Another sign of Fiji's accommodation toward the Western nations was its decision in 1983 to reverse its previous policy of banning from Fiji ports nuclear-powered ships or vessels carrying nuclear weapons. The government continued its support, however, for efforts to establish a nuclear-free Pacific and adamantly opposed nuclear weapons testing and the storage of radioactive materials in the region. Fiji was not a signatory of any international security agreement. The foreign minister stated in 1983, however, that the government acted on advice from Australia and New Zealand-members of the Security Treaty Between Australia, New Zealand, and the United States of America (the ANZUS treaty)-in reversing its policy on nuclear ships (see The ANZUS Treaty and Other Security Arrangements, ch. 5; Appendix C). These countries suggested that, should Fiji change its policy, it would receive ready assistance form them in preserving its security. Since colonial times, Fiji military officers have trained in Australia and New Zealand, and both New Zealand and British troops have used Fiji as a training ground for jungle warfare. Until 1981 the chief of staff of the Royal Fiji Military Forces (RFMF) was a New Zealander. The all-volunteer RFMF has never seen action on Fiji territory; in 1983 there were nearly as many Fiji soldiers stationed in the Sinai and Lebanon as part of the UN forces as there were in Fiji. All told, the RFMF army had 2,500 uniformed soldiers in 1983-about 1,900 regulars and some 600 so-called territorial forces. The latter could either be former regulars or new recruits and, like the regulars, were eligible for service in the UN forces. One infantry battalion was stationed in Lebanon, another in the Sinai, and a third at home in 1983; there was also a small engineering company and a modest artillery company. In 1974 the RFMF created a naval division to carry out the increasingly important function of patrolling the nation's 200-nautical-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ-see Glossary). Based in Suva, the navy had 26 officers and 145 sailors in 1983. It had three former United States "Redwing" coastal minesweepers, one 303-ton survey craft, an eight-ton survey launch, and an 85-ton patrol craft. The division set up a national surveillance center in 1984 that depended on radio and telephone reports from passing vessels and aircraft to report activities within the EEZ. The RFMF had no air wing and depended on visiting New Zealand aircraft, especially helicopters, for occasional training missions. In early 1984 Australia mooted the possibility of staging periodic air reconnaissance missions out of Nadi Airport that would carry RFMF soldiers patrolling the EEZ. The Fijians have found service in the RFMF most attractive, but in the late 1970s at least one-third of the forces were Indian. Since 1981 the chief of staff of the RFMF has been a Fijian. Service in the UN forces in the Middle East, for which the RFMF soldiers received about triple the salary offered at home, was especially attractive. The RFMF has trained about 600 new soldiers each year for rotating service in the UN forces. The government, however, has had trouble collecting payments for its military services from the UN, and the political opposition advocated pulling out of the forces altogether. Internal security was the responsibility of the Royal Fiji Police, modeled in all but dress after the British police force. Fijians made up some 53 percent of the total force of 1,316 people in 1979, while Indians constituted 42 percent. The ethnic composition was about the same at all levels, but the commissioner of police in 1982 was Indian. There were only 24 policewomen. During the normal course of duty, the police did not carry weapons. The police were authorized to set up a special constabulary to help in day-to-day work or in times of special national need. Fiji has avoided the ethnic violence common to many other multiethnic societies. The nation's 11 prisons, which had room for 976 persons in 1983, held an average of 14,000 crowded prisoners that year. Only one-fourth of the inmates were jailed for more than one year, and some 40 percent were locked up for failing to pay fines. From 75 to 80 percent of the prisoners were Fijian. Severe overcrowding led to small riots in the Suva and Lautoka facilities in 1980. The Fiji Law Reform Commission advocated in 1983 that alternate forms of punishment, such as community service, be instituted to reduce the number of prisoners serving light sentences. An experimental program of this kind had been started in the early 1980s.