Laisenia Qarase - Foreign Policy

Foreign Policy

Qarase also took a strong stand against what he saw as foreign interference in Fiji's "domestic affairs." On 2 March 2005, he strongly reacted to a U.S. State Department report critical of racial discrimination in Fiji, and of the racial divide between Fiji's two main political parties. He rebuked the United States for interfering in Fiji's internal affairs. "Fiji can make a similar report on the US on all those issues. Our report would be far worse than the US state department's report on Fiji," he said. Then, on 13 April 2005, he rejected criticism from Australia and some other countries over the prosecution and imprisonment of two foreigners charged with committing homosexual acts, and said that other countries needed to respect Fiji's independence.

He also spoke out on issues relating to poverty and economic development in third world nations, including Pacific Islands states. Addressing the 28th annual meeting of the Association of Development Financing Institution in Asia and the Pacific (ADFIAP) at the Sheraton Resort in Nadi on 13 May 2005, Qarase said that poverty was the "greatest challenge" for development banks. He lamented what he called the greed and consumerism of rich countries which, he said, had the greatest concentrations of wealth in history while nearly half of the world's population is classified as poor, with more than a billion people living on less than one dollar a day. He called this disparity "an insult to the very concept of social justice" and "a shameful mark on the civilization of the 21st century." He went on to say that "The shame is compounded by the failure of developed countries to commit enough of their wealth and resources to helping poor populations from developing countries."

Qarase called for an international system to provide market access to exports from poor countries, to enable them to earn their own way in the world. He also condemned corruption, saying that it hindered investment, stunted economic growth, and led to rediced standards of living and to a fall in government revenues, and called it "a stain on the integrity of any nation."

Qarase was known as a staunch friend of Israel, a position he attributed to his strong Christian faith. On his orders, all United Nations votes involving Israel must be referred to him personally for approval. His support for Israeli interests was not unconditional, however, and Senator James Ah Koy (a fundamentalist Christian) strongly rebuked him in Parliament for not standing for Israel strongly enough.

Qarase was critical of the World Trade Organization, saying that its policies were unfair to small countries like Fiji. "WTO is trying to impose equality of trade in an unequal world," he said at the 18th Fiji-Australia Business Forum in Sydney on 17 October 2005, "but for developing countries like Fiji there is no level playing field, just a slippery slope." He believed that it would be a long time before Fiji's economy could compete on equal terms with that of more developed nations.