Suva: News of New Zealand government spying on Fiji and tapping phone lines before and after the 2006 coup comes as no surprise, says permanent Secretary for Information Sharon Smith-Johns.
Smith-Johns says Fiji has always maintained that New Zealand was indeed spying on Fiji and the leaked documents revealed today have validated those claims.
The cables released by the Wikileaks website show that NZ used signals intelligence to listen in on phone conversations between Fiji’s military and leadership.
Smith-Johns says the Fiji government has nothing to hide and New Zealand could go on listening if they want.
“Let them listen to what the government has to say. We’ve got nothing to say, we know where the Roadmap is taking us, we know of elections in 2014, we know when the constitution will come into place, we talk about this openly so let the NZ government spy on us and pass that information onto America or to Australia or to whoever they’re passing the information to.”
Smith-Johns has also refuted claims in overseas media that the leaked reports would anger Fiji Prime Minister Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama.
She said the reports only show that Fiji was right and that New Zealand was spying on Fiji.
The New Zealand government spied on Fiji before and after the 2006 coup, leaked US documents released by Wikileaks show.
The cables show that NZ used signals intelligence or SIGINT to listen in on phone conversations between Fiji’s military and leadership.
According to NZ media, the US noted in their reports that intelligence provided by NZ was very "helpful" in their analysis of the Fiji situation.
The cable says that then NZ Prime Minister Helen Clarke had realised after the Fiji coup that NZ had become too reliant on Australian intelligence.
However, the cables did not go into detail what information NZ gathered from listening in to communication between Fiji’s leaders.
In December 2008, the Fiji government had released a statement accusing Australia and NZ of spying on Fiji and tapping Fiji government phones.
The NZ government then did not comment on the issue and Prime Minister Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama said Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith did not deny the statement when it was put to him.