Games-Commonwealth organisers welcome Fiji return for Glasgow

Fiji was fully suspended in 2009 but a decision by the military government to hold national elections in September brought about loosening of the sanction at a meeting of Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group in London.

(Reuters)

That clears the way for Fiji to send a team to Glasgow for the July 23-August 3 Games, having missed the previous version in Delhi in 2010.

"I am delighted to welcome Fiji back into the Commonwealth Games family, and very pleased that they will be able to participate in Glasgow," Commonwealth Games Federation president Prince Tunku Imran said in a news release.

"The Games will be an incredible festival of sport, and the celebrations will be all the more complete with our Fijian friends and colleagues taking part."

Fiji has suffered four coups and a bloody military mutiny since 1987, mainly as a result of tension between the majority indigenous Fijian population and an economically powerful, ethnic Indian minority.

(Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Sudipto Ganguly)