Fiji coup leader assumes top post

Fiji's military chief took office Friday as the South Pacific nation's interim prime minister, cementing the power he seized by force one month ago in an armed coup.

In a national address, Commodore Frank Bainimarama warned his opponents against criticizing the government and said one of his priorities would be to secure immunity for himself and his officers for staging the coup.

"I implore all those who may think about challenging, through whatever means or methods, the choice and wisdom of His Excellency to think again," said Bainimarama, referring to President Ratu Josefa Iloilo, whom he reinstated to the largely ceremonial post on Thursday. "We need to move forward."

Earlier, Bainimarama promised to be "a true and faithful prime minister" during a swearing in ceremony in Fiji's capital, Suva.

The military chief seized power in a bloodless coup Dec. 5. He dissolved the Cabinet, suspended Parliament and deposed both Iloilo and elected Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, whom he banished to his home island 190 miles north of Suva.

The coup _ Fiji's fourth in nearly two decades _ was the culmination of a long impasse between Bainimarama and Qarase over bills offering pardons to conspirators in a 2000 coup and handing lucrative coastal land ownership to indigenous Fijians. Bainimarama, himself an indigenous Fijian, said the bills were unfair to the island's ethnic Indian minority.

The military ruler initially assumed presidential powers. But he relinquish that claim and reinstated Iloilo after a dispute with the country's influential Great Council of Chiefs, which has strong influence among Fiji's politically dominant indigenous majority. The council had maintained that both Qarase and Iloilo were the legitimate powers.

But in rare address to the nation Thursday, Iloilo said he would have done "exactly what the army commander did," and that the coup was valid under the law.

But he also said Fiji should return to democracy as soon as possible and that he planned to hold consultations before appointing the interim government.

Bainimarama has said his interim Cabinet will be selected from a short list of 31 people before the end of January as the first step on Fiji's road to democracy, but he has made not mention of a return to elections.