Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said he could not ban Fiji
from the Sydney Olympics in September.
Mr Downer said inviting Fijian teams to Australia until the hostage crisis
eases would be "highly inappropriate" and he would follow New
Zealand's lead of denying Fijian teams visas.
But he admitted the Olympics were out of his control.
A spokesman for Mr Downer said he had not given any consideration to
blocking any Olympic team.
Olympic athletes do not receive stamped visas in their passports, and
enter a host country with their Olympic accreditation and identification pass,
which doubles as a visa.
New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff said on Tuesday no visas would
be issued to Fijian rugby sides planning to tour there later this month.
Fiji's trade union leaders are calling on the country's athletes to boycott
the
Sydney Olympic Games in protest against the ongoing political crisis.
At least five Fijian men and women are set to take part in Olympic events
including swimming, judo and sail-boarding, while another three are waiting
on selection for athletics and weight-lifting.
Australia's Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, has said it would be
inappropiate for Fijian sporting teams to take part in international events
in
the current political climate.
The assistant national secretary of Fiji's trade union congress, Diwan
Shankar, says a boycott might disappoint individual athletes, but they
should consider the greater cause.
"It's a question of which perspective you undertake and I think the
perspective we have taken is that every little pressure that we can mount,
and these are all the pressure points that we can press on," Shankar said.
"It's like an acupuncture game. If you don't put the right needles in the
right
place you might not get the desired effect."
Fijian sugar cane farmers say they will cripple the industry, which is vital
to
the economy, if coup leader George Speight does not release his 31
hostages.
The farmers are boycotting the harvest in peak cane-cutting season.
Sugar is one of Fiji's main income earners, with an estimated worth this
year of $300 million (Fiji dollars).
It is a bumper crop after two years of drought, but it is a crop still standing
in the fields a month after the usual start of harvest.
Unions say they do not know how many of Fiji's 23,000 cane farmers are
part of the boycott, but none of the country's four sugar mills are crushing.
The Fiji Sugar Corporation says if farmers do not end their action, it will
lay
off 4,000 people on Friday.
But the corporation says farmers ranks are beginning to split and it plans
to
open a mill in the north-west later today.
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