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Rudd signs partnerships at Pacific Forum

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
January 27, 2009 - 4:24PM

The Australian government has signed partnership agreements to promote development in the Solomon Islands and Kiribati at a Special Pacific Island Forum (PIF) Leaders' meeting in Port Moresby.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said on Tuesday the partnerships would help to improve school attendance rates and economic growth in both nations through extra assistance from Australia.

Mr Rudd is in the Papua New Guinea capital for the one-day meeting set up to discuss Fiji and the failure of its interim government, lead by Commodore Frank Bainimarama, to hold democratic elections in the wake of a 2006 coup.

Officials from both Australia and New Zealand expressed disappointment at the failure of Bainimarama to attend the meeting of 15 PIF nation leaders.

That feeling would not have been helped by the deportation of another Australian publisher of the Fiji Times, Rex Gardner, 58, who flew into Sydney on Tuesday from Nadi.

Mr Gardner said the action was unnecessary but he presumed it was because of a letter he had published in the newspaper which criticised a Fiji High Court decision backing the 2006 coup.

He is the third Australian Fiji-based newspaper publisher to be deported in the past 12 months.
A representative of the interim government of Fiji at the PIF, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, defended his government's decision to delay democratic elections, saying electoral reform had to come first.

"As the PM has said, the holding of elections for the sake of holding elections is not going to achieve any proper outcome nor will it achieve any long-term democratic stability in Fiji," Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said.
He said Bainimarama could not attend the forum and was needed back home to manage the clean-up after major floods killed 11 people in Fiji in early January.
The forum is believed to be considering the possible expulsion of Fiji from the PIF or imposing a timetable for a return to democracy.

Mr Rudd, who will return to Australia late on Tuesday, said the partnership agreements signed were the "centrepiece" of Australia's new approach to the Pacific region.
He said in a statement that up to one million children in the region did not attend school and as many as 18,000 died each year from preventable causes.

The partnerships aimed to improve service delivery, infrastructure and economic in the Solomon Islands and to improve basic education, workforce skills and economic growth in Kiribati.
© 2009 AAP

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