SYDNEY (Reuters) – China said it held a video meeting to debate police cooperation with several Pacific island nations on Tuesday, with at the very least two nations telling Reuters their ministers and police commissioners were unavailable to attend.
China’s try and strike a security and trade take care of 10 Pacific island nations in May fuelled concern in Washington and Canberra about Beijing’s military ambitions within the region, and prompted a lift in Western aid.
Those concerns were first sparked when Solomon Islands struck a security pact with China in April.
Chinese state media reported on Wednesday that China’s Minister for Public Security, Wang Xiaohong, had held the primary minister-level dialogue on police cooperation with some South Pacific countries.
The video meeting, co-chaired with Solomon Islands Minister of Police Anthony Veke, took place after two powerful earthquakes struck Solomon Islands on Tuesday.
Political Cartoons on World Leaders
A photograph posted to the Twitter account of the Chinese embassy in Fiji showed Veke because the only Pacific islands minister on the video meeting.
The heads of the police departments of Fiji, Vanuatu, Kiribati, Tonga and Papua Latest Guinea had attended, Xinhua reported.
Tonga’s Minister of Police and its Commissioner of Police, who’s an Australian citizen, were unavailable, a Tonga police spokeswoman told Reuters.
“There was one other representative from Tonga,” she added.
Papua Latest Guinea’s Commissioner of Police also didn’t attend; essentially the most populous South Pacific island was as an alternative represented within the meeting by a police superintendent, a PNG police spokesman told Reuters.
Papua Latest Guinea is negotiating a defence pact with Australia, while Fiji signed an agreement with Australia last month to permit the operation of every nation’s militaries in the opposite country.
At a White House summit in September, america pledged to spice up aid and step up FBI training for Pacific islands including the Solomon Islands.
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham. Editing by Gerry Doyle)
Copyright 2022 Thomson Reuters.
