Suva - Fiji rebels and military leaders reached a deal yesterday to end a five-week political crisis in the South Pacific nation, paving the way for the release of the Prime Minister, Mr Mahendra Chaudhry, and 30 other political hostages.
"We have now reached an agreement," Mr Joe Brown, private secretary to former president Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, said in the capital, Suva.
The rebel leader, Mr George Speight, and his gunmen have held Mr Chaudhry, Fiji's first ethnic Indian Prime Minister, and the other hostages for 36 days inside Suva's parliamentary complex after storming the building in the name of indigenous Fijians. Details of the deal were not revealed and Mr Brown, who was flanked by Mr Speight's lawyer and the military spokesman, Mr Filippo Tarakinikini, did not comment on the fate of the hostages.
