Pacific

No New Zealand guarantee that full aid would be restored to Fiji

16:58 pm on 17 April 2003

New Zealand's aid minister, Marian Hobbs, says she is giving no guarantees that aid to Fiji will return to pre-coup levels.

Fiji's prime minister, Laisenia Qarase, said after talks with Mr Goff that he expected aid funding to return to pre-coup levels once relations were fully restored.

Ms Hobbs, who has been visiting Fiji as a member of a delegation led by New Zealand foreign minister, Phil Goff, says aid to Fiji will be worked out in the same way as that for other countries.

"What I can't do right now, as I think Fiji or Papua New Guinea would recognize, is I can't sort of say in the last country I visited, I see their need, we would have a see saw in aid where Niue is the flavour of the month and the next Fiji."