Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka on Wednesday said he had to “borrow” an Australian Defence Force plane with its crew to fly to Kiribati soon after taking office to get the country back into the Pacific Island Forum.
He said he was the forum chairman at the time and “didn’t want to hand over a fractured” group to the incoming chair, Mark Brown of the Cook Islands.
“The break was a result of misunderstanding and not properly following the protocols of the Pacific,” he said.
“The leaders of Kiribati were offended by some words in Fiji by the leadership of Fiji at that time. They were not spoken in the spirit of kinship in the Pacific. I had to make sure I was handing over something that was total and complete. We had yaqona, we had prayers, and it was done in the Pacific way.”
