Australian PM to attend Pacific Summit

AUSTRALIA: Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will attend a special summit of Pacific leaders called to discuss Fiji after a decision to postpone the meeting was overturned, his office said Sunday.

“The Australian PM and his team will be travelling to Papua New Guinea on Tuesday for the meeting,” a spokeswoman said.

Papua New Guinea announced Friday that the Pacific Island Forum summit had been postponed until February after Fiji coup leader Voreqe Bainimarama refused to attend, saying he needed to oversee flood relief efforts.

Rudd then announced that he would cancel his trip to PNG along with plans to travel on from there to India and then to Switzerland for the World Economic Forum in Davos.

But on Saturday the meeting was on again after forum chairman Niue Premier Toke Talagi apparently overruled PNG Prime Minister Michael Somare’s decision and insisted it go ahead.

While Rudd would now attend the summit, he would not revive his plans to visit India and Switzerland, his spokeswoman said.

Rudd dropped the Indian visit after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was scheduled to undergo heart bypass surgery on Saturday.

He cancelled the Davos trip to work on Australia’s response to the global financial crisis, his office said.

The PNG meeting has been called to decide whether to suspend Fiji from the forum.

Fiji has been at the top of the forum agenda since Bainimarama toppled the elected government in December 2006, in the nation’s fourth coup in two decades. In October 2007, Bainimarama promised Pacific leaders at a forum summit he would hold elections by March this year, but by the middle of 2008 he had reneged, saying he needed to first reform the country’s electoral system.

Sydney, Sunday, AFP