Small Pacific nations accuse Australia of bullying

CANBERRA, Jan 13 (Reuters) Smaller South Pacific nations today accused Australia of bullying and said their larger neighbour was trying to dominate their affairs in the wake of a December coup in Fiji and unrest in the Solomon Islands.

Foreign ministers from the Solomons, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Vanuatu, meeting in the Solomons capital Honiara, said Canberra had too much control over an international security force sent to restore calm in the Solomons in 2003.

''In the last year or so RAMSI has mutated from a regional initiative to a an Australian hegemony,'' Solomon Islands Foreign Affairs Minister Patterson Oti told journalists after a meeting of the four-nation group.

Since 2003, Australia has led a Pacific-wide aid mission, known as RAMSI, to stamp out corruption and restore law and order in the Solomons after the island country came close to collapse due to ethnic violence and mismanagement.

Nearly 400 troops and an extra 120 police from Australia, New Zealand, Tonga and PNG were rushed to Honiara after national elections sparked riots last April.

But relations cooled between Canberra and Honiara last September after Solomons Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare expelled Canberra's top diplomat, Patrick Cole.

Sogavare accused Cole of courting opposition lawmakers and undermining an inquiry into the rioting which left large parts of Honiara's Chinatown in ruins after rumours Taiwanese aid money was used to influence the elections.

Australia, a major regional aid donor, then fell out with PNG in October after its national security chief allegedly assisted the escape of the new Solomons' chief legal officer, an Australian wanted for alleged child sex offences.

A military coup in Fiji in December in which military commander Frank Bainimarama ousted Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase has also angered Canberra.

Australia halted support for Fiji soldiers taking part in the RAMSI mission, and imposed travel restrictions on lawmakers from the Solomons, Fiji and PNG, barring them from visiting or travelling through Australia.

Oti said RAMSI was a regional initiative and Australia had no right to cut Fiji from the mission without consultation.

The four-nation group also opposed moves to suspend Fiji from the Pacific Islands Forum, a key regional grouping in the Pacific, which counts 16 nations including Australia and New Zealand, PNG foreign minister Paul Tiensten said.

Australia yesterday replaced its Honiara envoy in a move aimed at easing the four-month row between the two countries.

Senior career diplomat Peter Hooton would replace Cole later this month, the government said.

REUTERS SY ND1316