Suva (Fiji) Soldiers fired flares and set up checkpoints in a late-night show of force in Fiji's Capital, hours after the country's elected leader and its military commander ended talks aimed at averting a coup without achieving a breakthrough.
The military said the action that started at midnight Wednesday and continued for three hours was a training exercise to ready troops against any possible intervention by foreign forces in the country's high-simmering political crisis.
Yellow flares lit up the sky over the Capital, Suva, as soldiers fired mortars from a foreshore range on the city's outskirts. Armed soldiers set up checkpoints on city streets, but they didn't stop media vehicles and appeared not to be conducting searches.
Restaurants and bars remained open, and people on the street were apparently not bothered by the military presence.
Military spokesman Maj. Neumi Leweni said about 500 soldiers were involved in the exercise. Some 3,000 reservists have been called to barracks in recent days as coup tensions escalated.
Earlier Wednesday, Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase and military commander Commodore Frank Bainimarama held a two-hour, closed-door meeting in New Zealand's capital, Wellington, discussing the military's repeated threats to oust the government over a range of complaints.
New Zealand brokered the first face-to-face talks between the men in 10 months as concerns escalated that Fiji's fourth coup in 19 years was about to happen.
''We made substantial progress on the requests and demands from the military,'' Qarase told a Fiji radio station after the meeting, declining to give details.
He said there could be further consultations with Bainimarama, though no future meetings were scheduled.
Both men traveled back to Fiji after the talks.
New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters, who chaired the talks, said he was optimistic no coup would occur while the parties ''worked through this extraordinarily dangerous proposition,'' but noted that Bainimarama had not been asked for guarantees and had not given any.
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The two men have been feuding for almost two years, with Bainimarama threatening to force the government out if Qarase doesn't accede to a range of demands.
Qarase last month failed in a bid to have Bainimarama replaced after senior officers rallied around him.
Bainimarama, who last week gave the government a deadline for action of next Monday, didn't immediately comment on the talks. Beforehand, he said there would be no compromise on his demands.
Qarase had said before the meeting there was room for negotiation on some military demands. But he said others – such as dropping police charges against Bainimarama – would mean ''the military usurping the powers of other government agencies, and that's a threat to our democracy.''
In a statement, the military said Wednesday's exercise entailed ''securing strategic areas within the greater Suva area and also the firing of illumination rounds into the sea.''
''The exercise is in anticipation of any foreign intervention,'' it said.
The announcement was an apparent show of force directed in part at Australia, which earlier this month sent three navy ships to waters off Fiji to prepare to evacuate Australians in the event of a coup.
An Australian army Blackhawk helicopter crashed Wednesday while trying to land on one of the ships, the HMAS Kanimbla, killing one soldier and leaving another missing, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, the forces' commander, told reporters in Canberra.
Seven other soldiers aboard the helicopter suffered broken bones and other injuries, he said.
Bainimarama has repeatedly warned Australia and New Zealand not to interfere in Fiji's affairs.
Australia and New Zealand have deployed peacekeeping forces to the Solomon Islands and Tonga amid civil strife in those South Pacific countries.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who said earlier this week he thought a coup was imminent, on Wednesday said the situation in Fiji remained ''very worrying'' despite the talks between Qarase and Bainimarama.
Bainimarama has threatened in recent weeks to ''clean up'' Qarase's government if it does not accede to demands by next week, including that police drop all investigations into alleged wrongdoing by senior military officers and fire the police chief.
The military leader has also been an outspoken opponent of two pieces of government legislation: one offering amnesty to the plotters of a 2000 coup, and another that hands coastal land ownership in the multiethnic country to indigenous Fijians.
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