Fiji's 'founding father' dies

Ratu Mara was the dominant Pacific Island statesman for decades

Fiji's former leader, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, has died at the age of 83.

He was considered to have been the founding father of modern Fiji after the colony won independence from Britain in 1970.

Ratu Mara was the South Pacific country's first and longest-serving prime minister and was a key player in regional politics for decades.

He died in hospital in the capital, Suva, from complications of a stroke he suffered three years ago.

A spokesman for Fiji's prime minister's office confirmed the news, telling BBC News Online that there would be an official announcement once certain protocols had been met.

Regional leader

Ratu Mara was the last of a group of powerful Pacific Island leaders who led their countries to independence from Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the United States from the mid-1960s.

For more than three decades, Ratu Mara was the dominant statesman in the region.

He was Fiji's first prime minister after almost a century of rule by the British.

The BBC's Phil Mercer in Sydney says that in those early post-colonial days he struggled to unite bickering tribes as well as to forge a more harmonious relationship between ethnic Indians and indigenous Fijians.

Under his leadership, Fiji became a major producer of sugar cane.

Coup victim

He was born in 1920 into a life of privilege. He studied medicine at university in Otago and economics at Oxford before becoming a paramount chief of Lau, an outlying archipelago on Fiji's eastern fringe.

After serving as prime minister for more than 20 years, Ratu Mara became president.

His tenure ended abruptly during the nationalist coup in May 2000, when he was forced to resign.

Rebels accused the elderly president of working to keep power in the hands of a small group of native chiefs and ethnic Indian businessmen, at the expense of ordinary Fijians.

He died in hospital on Sunday after returning from New Zealand, where he had undergone treatment following a stroke three years ago.