AP Reports Fiji Coup Underway

Showtime. The Associated Press is reporting that the prime minister of Fiji is reporting that a full scale coup is underway. Australia has refused to intervene militarily.

SUVA, Fiji - Fiji's elected leader said Tuesday a military takeover was under way in the South Pacific country as armed troops surrounded his house and other government buildings in a lockdown of the capital.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard said he refused a request from Fiji's besieged prime minister Tuesday for "military intervention" to end the coup. New Zealand called the coup an "outrage" and said it was cutting military ties with Fiji, the first international sanctions.

Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase said it was not clear who was in control of his tiny country after heavily armed soldiers set up check points around the capital, Suva, and seized official vehicles from government ministers. The prime minister said he was not able to leave his house and go to work because troops took his car.

"There are some things that aren't clear," Qarase told the Legend radio network by telephone, when he was asked if he was still in charge. "If the military has completed the takeover, then they are in control. If they have not completed the takeover, then we are still the government of the day."

He said he had received information that troops would take him into custody sometime Tuesday, though he said that was unconfirmed.

Qarase turned to Australia for help in preventing a full military takeover.

"The prime minister of Fiji rang me and asked for Australian military intervention in response to the coup," the Australian prime minister told reporters. "I indicated to him that that would not be possible."

There are a lot of ethnic tensions driving this right now:

A coup would be the fourth in 19 years for the country. The military twice grabbed power in 1987 to ensure political supremacy for indigenous Fijians among a population that includes a large ethnic Indian minority.

Gunmen angry that those advantages were being eroded seized Parliament in a 2000 coup that brought Qarase, a moderate nationalist, to power in a deal brokered by Bainimarama. Qarase has since won two elections but his relations with the military commander have long since soured.

So, yet another coup in the Pacific region. Not a good year for that region, is it?

UPDATE: Washington Post coverage here.

SUVA, Fiji — Fiji's military commander said Tuesday that he had seized control of the country and dismissed the elected prime minister after a weeks-long standoff between the two leaders rooted in tension between the South Pacific nation's indigenous people and its ethnic Indian minority.

Commodore Frank Bainimarama told a news conference that he was using special powers under the constitution to assume the powers of the president and replace Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase.