Frank Bainimarama

Bainimarama, who led Fiji for 16 years, faced the country's High Court in the capital Suva on Thursday.

The conviction relates to Bainimarama's role in influencing a police investigation into funding of the region's biggest university, the University of the South Pacific, in 2019.

The courtroom went silent after the sentence was read out, with Bainimarama later being led out in handcuffs, surrounded by police, and into a waiting police van.

He did not react after the sentence was read out, but his wife, who was sitting by his side, broke down in tears.

He said he intends to make the APEC Summit lean towards the Pacific way, as it is an enormous trade and investment area – and needs to make much better linkages between APEC and Pacific Island nations.

O’Neill, when addressing the Fiji Parliament on Monday, stressed that it is very important for Pacific island nations to embrace each other in such big events as APEC.

He said APEC will be more relaxed than in previous years, and have an agenda of real relevance to developing economies.

Speaking in the Solomons parliament Monday, Manasseh Sogavare said Fiji should apologise for bringing Indonesia into the MSG.  

He said Fiji's Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama breached MSG procedure by forcing the other four full members to accept Indonesia as part of the sub-regional grouping, whose full members are Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and FLNKS Kanaks movement of New Caledonia.  

Indonesia was admitted to the MSG with observer status in 2011 after Bainimarama assumed the MSG's rotational chairmanship.  

In his address Frank Bainimarama urged world leaders to strive for more than just the two degrees’ target set in Paris in 2015.

In November, Mr Bainimarama will take up the presidency COP23 UN climate change conference in Germany.

He told leaders at the General Assembly they should commit to limiting global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels.

"It may be tempting for political leaders to show that they are protecting some national industry or near term economic goal," he said.

Instead, he has told the Fiji Sun newspaper that he will be going to the Queen's birthday celebrations in London.

The MSG summit in Port Vila is to revisit the appointment of Fiji's Amena Yauvoli as the new director general of the MSG secretariat.

Mr Yauvoli's selection was announced at the start of the month by Fiji's Foreign Minister Ratu Inoke Kubuabola and later confirmed by the MSG chairman, Solomon Islands prime minister Manasseh Sogavare.

Bainimarama says their priority remains to provide basic necessities and restore essential services within these thirty-days and then they will decide on the next step from there on.

He says he had hoped Australia would have done better in its target of reducing emissions by between 26 and 28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

"I have a simple message today for the Australian Prime Minister: Mr Abbott, it is time to put the welfare and survival of your Pacific Island neighbours before the expansion of your existing coal industry and your continuing reliance on this dirtiest of energy sources. The other day, the President of Kiribati, His Excellency Anote Tong, described Australia's loyalty to coalmines as selfish and I couldn't agree more."