SUVA -- Deposed Fijian prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry on Sunday demanded that the Pacific nation’s former top police officer be called to explain the role of many leading politicians, military officers and businessmen in the coup in 2000.

The demand came after an army officer gave police the names of those who, he claimed, secretly organized the putsch.

The names came from New Zealand Army instructor Lieutenant-Colonel Viliame Seruvakula who in 2000 was commander of the Third Battalion of the Fiji Infantry Forces.

He played a key role in crushing a military mutiny in November 2000 but soon after left Fiji for a new life in New Zealand but was only this year interviewed by police over what he knew.

On May 19, 2000, a group of civilians and special forces soldiers seized Fijis Parliament, taking Chaudhry and his government hostage for 56 days. Although freed unharmed, Chaudhry was never allowed to resume leadership, AFP reported.

Three men, including supposed leader George Speight, were convicted of treason for their roles in the coup and are now serving life sentences on an island near Suva.

Speight pleaded guilty in his trial and no evidence was heard while the other trials left the impression that the full story had yet to be told.

In a statement Chaudhry welcomed the police decision to send an investigator to New Zealand and claimed they had been prevented from doing so earlier by police commissioner Isikia Savua.

He was implicated in the coup but a secret public service investigation cleared him and he is now Fiji’s United Nations representative.

Also implicated in evidence in various trials was the 2000 opposition leader, Inoke Kubuabola, now Fiji’s High Commissioner to Papua New Guinea.

Chaudhry said the Fiji Labour Party (FLP) believed Savua had obstructed any interview of Seruvakula. "FLP calls on authorities to recall Mr. Savua and (Kubuabola) to answer to allegations of their involvement," Chaudhry said

Seruvakula made no secret of what he said was inside information on the coup but until recently the police had not talked to him.

"The people in Nukulau ... none of those people came up with the idea to plot a coup," he told the ***Fiji Sun*** two years ago. "They are men in the middle. People who came up with the idea are still walking the streets, working and getting paid today."

Fiji police spokesman Mesake Koroi at the weekend told the Fiji Times that Seruvakula had released the additional names to Fiji Police criminal investigations units assistant superintendent Waisea Tabakau.

Files are expected to be handed to the Fiji’s Office of the Public Prosecutions in a week.

They were "prominent names" but police would not release them for "security reasons", Koroi said.

He said around 3,000 people had been interviewed over the coup.

In the ***Fiji Sun*** interview Seruvakula, a cousin of Speight, said businessmen, chiefs and failed politicians were behind the coup.

He said he was leaving Fiji to avoid the hatred welling up within him at the thought of people who wrecked his country, claims he was offered money in the first week of the coup to switch his allegiance.