Suva, June 1: Fijian coup leader George Speight today challenged the nation's new military rulers to visit Parliament and hear the wishes of ethnic Fijians before making any more decisions about how to resolve the country's 14-day hostage crisis.Speight said a delegation from the military, which declared martial law and seized control of Fiji's government on Monday, should meet with tribal chiefs due to visit Parliament, where he and a gang of armed men are holding ethnic Indian Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry along with more than 30 hostage."Let the army delegation come down here and meet the chiefs," he said. "They really haven't had the talk, the confrontation, the dialogue with the people that we have had. That is at the very core and foundation of my government."Having initially said it would install a civil administration to restore democracy to Fiji, the military said yesterday it may stay in power for up to three years until a new constitution is drawn up and fresh elections planned.Speight has called on the military to instead install his self-styled Fijian nationalist government, which he declared after storming Parliament on May 19 to start the crisis.Since taking power, the army has accepted Speight's major demands: Scrapping the 1997 constitution blamed by indigenous Fijians for giving too much power to the ethnic Indian minority, deposing President Ratu Sir Kamisise Mara and offering Speight and his gang an amnesty.Still, Speight refuses to release his hostages, holding out for more say in the formation of an interim government, and the military has ruled out using force to free them.Meanwhile, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer warned that Speight was an erratic and unstable terrorist who could kill his hostages.Downer would not make a prediction on how the stalemate, now in its 14th day, would be resolved, but conceded it could end violently with the deaths of some of those being held in Fiji's Parliament. "His (Speight's) approach other than being criminal is completely erratic," Downer said in a radio interview. "There is no consistency in anything that he says - this is a man whose approach is completely unstable."He said it was telling that Speight had twice said he would abide by the ruling of Fiji's influential Great Council of Chiefs then changed his mind when it offered proposals to end the crisis. "It leads me to draw this conclusion and that is that George Speight has only one card to play and that is the hostages that he holds," Downer said. "Once he lets the hostages go, he has nothing more to offer. That man is a terrorist by any standards anywhere in the world and we should give no comfort to terrorists in any circumstances. "There is potential for the hostages to be killed."Downer also said he and New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff had agreed to hold off on placing sanctions on Fiji until the hostages were released. "Our joint judgment is that we think the wise thing to do is this: Wait until the hostages are released, keep the pressure on Speight as best we possibly can," he said. "Once the hostages are released, that is the opportunity for us to talk yet again with the Fiji authorities about our desire to see democracy restored and constitutional government reestablished." But he warned Fiji would be isolated, with catastrophic consequences, if Speight became the nation's leader. "If a terrorist were to become the head of government in Fiji, then the rest of the world would have nothing to do with it," he said.
