Thursday September 13, 2001

SUVA, Fiji - Fiji's newly elected prime minister unveiled his Cabinet yesterday, excluding the rival Labor Party but bringing in supporters of the leader of a coup that toppled the government last year.

Laisenia Qarase, an indigenous Fijian, named 18 members to his new Cabinet, which will have 20 posts. He included supporters of George Speight, who led a nationalist coup in May 2000 and ran for a seat in Parliament from his jail cell.

None of the new ministers were from the ethnic Indian-dominated Fiji Labor Party. The decision underlined the deep rift that divides Fiji's two main ethnic groups and apparently violated the constitution.

In elections last week, the Labor Party won 27 of 71 seats in Parliament. According to Fiji's constitution - which Qarase has vowed to rewrite - any party with more than eight seats is entitled to Cabinet posts in proportion to its number of seats.

The Cabinet ministers were sworn in later yesterday by President Ratu Josefa Iloilo at Government House.

Qarase published a letter in which he told Labor leader Mahendra Chaudhry, deposed as prime minister in Speight's coup, that Labor would "not contribute to a stable and workable government so essential to the promotion of national unity in Fiji."

Last year's coup was triggered by tensions between Fiji's ethnic Indian minority, who make up 44 percent of the population, and indigenous Fijians, who make up 51 percent of the 820,000 population.

Chaudhry was the Pacific nation's first ethnic Indian prime minister.

Qarase said that his Fijian United Party, which won 31 seats, had obtained enough support from independent lawmakers and smaller moderate parties to form a viable government.

Chaudhry said he would ask Fiji's appeals court to rule Qarase's Cabinet unconstitutional.

"What he (Qarase) has done effectively is making Fiji a laughing stock in the international community, the consequences of which will be very, very dire," Chaudhry said.

Speight, who is awaiting trial for treason, was elected as a Conservative Alliance lawmaker. Two Conservative Alliance members, but not Speight, were given Cabinet posts.