Washington: The military junta must take
steps to return Fiji to democracy, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said.
"We want to see Fiji return to democracy," Clinton
told reporters yesterday at a joint media availability with
her New Zealand counterpart Murray Stuart McCully.
The two leaders discussed the current situation in
Fiji which has a significant population of people of Indian
origin.
"We talked about developments in Fiji, and both New
Zealand and the United States agree that the military junta
must take steps to return Fiji to democracy," Clinton said.
"We agree on the importance of pursuing negotiations
on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which will provide a free
trade agreement for nine countries across the region,
including both of ours.
"We’re making steady progress on this and we hope to
be able to have the negotiations complete by the time we all
meet in Hawaii for APEC toward the end of this year," she
said.
McCully said New Zealand is looking forward to our
participation in the APEC meeting which will take place in
Honolulu later this year.
"Of course, this is the target date by which we are
hoping our officials will have been able to agree on
fundamental elements for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the
agreement that we see as being critical to economic
integration within our region," he said.
"These discussions will obviously have significant
implications for all of those countries currently at the table
and, of course, some that are not currently there," the
Foreign Minister said.
PTI
First Published: Wednesday, May 18, 2011, 11:02