Australia, Fiji attempt to bury climate hatchet

SYDNEY: The leaders of Fiji and Australia agreed to boost bilateral ties on Monday (Sep 16) as they sought to smooth relations following a highly publicised clash over climate change at a Pacific summit last month.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison welcomed his Fijian counterpart, Frank Bainimarama, just weeks after the Pacific leader branded him "very insulting, very condescending" for his response to criticism of Australia's reluctance to make climate change a policy priority.

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There was uproar at the Pacific Islands Forum after Morrison rejected regional leaders' demands his government ban new coal mines and coal-fired power plants as part of their call for urgent climate action.

The conservative Australian politician countered that his government was the leading provider of development aid to the Pacific region, drawing Bainimarama's rebuke.

But the two leaders struck a conciliatory tone at Monday's bilateral meeting, where they signed a "Fiji-Australia Vuvale Partnership".

Vuvale – or family in Fijian – is "a term of intimacy, it's a term of family and that's very much always been the basis of our relationships", Morrison said.

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"The people-to-people relationships, the strategic relationships, the economic partnerships, they're not new, they go back many, many, many generations," he told reporters in Canberra.

Bainimarama also adopted a more diplomatic tone in his public comments, saying "members of any family are entitled to their disagreements".

"No-one expects that our differences can be resolved quickly or easily, but we must never fall down in forging common ground, and common ground is what I intend to seek in our discussion on the issues that impact the lives of Fijian, Australians and all the Pacific people this morning," he said.

The agreement aims to strengthen defence and economic cooperation as well as "people-to-people links", but little detail was provided.

Relations between Fiji and Australia improved in 2014 when Bainimarama, a one-time coup leader, won a long-awaited demo