NZ anger over Pacific summit's partner ban simmers
As important deliberations take place at the PIF Leaders Meeting in Honiara, a briefing document shows New Zealand pushing US interests.
Friction remains over a decision to block foreign ‘dialogue partners’ attending this week’s Pacific Island Forum Leaders Meeting in Honiara, where far-reaching decisions over how the region’s top consensus body operates will be taken.
The move excluded 21 partner states from the five-day summit that began on September 8. The partners include the United States, the UK, France and the EU, as well as China.
Although New Zealand’s opposition to the ban has been presented in terms of lost investment opportunities, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) briefing paper obtained by In Context suggests strong geopolitical reasons for its disapproval.
Last month, hosts of this year’s annual summit, the Solomon Islands, successfully pushed for a ban on outside partners taking part, as Pacific leaders prepared to discuss proposals to revise the Pacific Islands Forum’s (PIF) regional architecture. The Review of Regional Architecture is geared towards more effectively delivering its 2050 Blue Pacific Continent policy plan and to better engage with dialogue partners.
The Leaders Meeting will discuss a proposed two-tier mechanism for future engagements with dialogue partners, allowing some states more access to the PIF than others. Any decisions over which partners to include in Tier One and Tier Two will not be simply based on which align with Pacific priorities, but also on geopolitical considerations and the amount of pressure exerted.
In August, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele defended his intention to have partner states excluded, arguing it was necessary so that Pacific leaders could make important decisions over the recommendations in the review without distraction.
Leaders entered this week’s summit amid growing geostrategic competition and fears of undue influence over regional decision making.
The Solomon Islands managed to convince most present at the Pacific Islands Forum Foreign Ministers' Meeting (FFMM), held in Suva in mid-August, to defer a Partners Dialogue Meeting until next year, when the revised mechanism for dealing with dialogue partners would be in place.
Peters says any division fault of Solomons
The thorny issue of Taiwan also played a role. Like most other Pacific nations, the Solomon Islands recognises the One-China Principle, which sees self-governing Taiwan as an integral part of China’s territory and not a country. There were reports of Honiara attempting to abide by the principle by refusing visas for Taiwan officials earlier this year, while in the lead-up to the PIC Leaders Meeting, Honiara declined to confirm whether Taiwan would be invited.
Peters linked the visa controversy with a subsequent decision to ban all dialogue partners from attending, to avoid splitting the PIF over the Taiwanese issue. Taiwan as been recognised as a ‘development’ partner since 1992.
“It's been outside influence and pressure on the Solomon Islands not to invite certain countries, and as a consequence, no countries are being invited,” Peters told the Pacific Media Outlet’s Pacific Mornings last month.
Manele rejected the comments. He has so far refrained from commenting on Peters’ latest outburst over the weekend, when the Foreign Minister told New Zealand media any division within the PIF would be the fault of the Solomon Islands.
“The blame lies squarely with the decision by the Solomon Islands government, who knew that over the years and decades, we've invited dialogue partners to come along because it expands our capacity,” Peters said.
“Had we known that, the question is whether we'd be having it in Honiara next week, or in some other country where we can get dialogue partners to be interested.”
Peters’ remarks however ignored the fact that Manele went through all appropriate channels to gain agreement among Pacific neighbours over the move.
Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Fiji had opposed Manele’s plan, with Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka warning the move could “fracture” the PIF. In the end, only one of 18 Pacific nations’ heads scheduled to attend the PIF Leaders Meeting this week did not do so - associate member and New Zealand dependent territory Tokelau, due to “urgent consultations".
Western countries like the US and France have expressed disappointment and concern with the move. Some analysts fear retaliatory action from the Trump administration, a response that would further undermine US credibility in the region after recent trade tariffs imposed on nations, development funding cuts and a US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords.
Most Pacific states recognised the prudence of sidelining states jockeying for position as deliberations during this week’s summit take place.
New Zealand ‘conduit between Pacific and US’
Why New Zealand government failed to take this view may be due to Manele’s move effectively stymying powerful NATO-aligned states from seeking to entrench Western interests within revised PIF structures at the Leaders Meeting.
Although New Zealand and Australia publicly emphasize Pacific regionalism and the centrality of the PIF, a declassified document reveals how New Zealand sees its role in the region as a sub-imperial power, eager to accommodate US interests.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) briefing paper entitled ‘Visit to Vanuatu Parliament and engagement with Speaker’ was drawn up ahead of Peters’ visit to Tonga, Vanuatu and Hawai’i in April, part of a sustained bid to renew relationships across the Pacific to counter Chinese influence.
In a section, ‘Background Brief: United States in the Pacific’, it said: “New Zealand can play an important role as a conduit between the Pacific and the United States”.
“We have a strong interest in supporting the US to succeed in the Pacific,” it added.
“Where US interests align with ours, our collective actions can deliver outcomes for the region that New Zealand cannot otherwise achieve.”
Former director of governance and engagement at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, Sione Tekiteki, writing in E-Tangata on September 7, observed that partnerships rather than Pacific priorities continue to define the shape of Pacific regionalism.
“Beyond the Pacific Islands Forum, partners are deeply entrenched in every layer of Pacific regionalism. They sit inside regional institutions, dominate multilateral engagements, and shape bilateral arrangements. Increasingly, in some countries, they effectively exercise sovereign rights through exclusive security agreements, using aid as leverage,” he said.
New Zealand has already helped increase Western influence within the PIF.
Last year it played a pivotal role in encouraging the PIF to take a more defence-orientated position against China, by having it structurally linked with the heavily Western-aligned defence body, the South Pacific Defence Ministers’ Meeting (SPDMM).
The SPDMM annually sees regional Defence Ministers, and senior defence officials, meet in what it describes as “the only ministerial-level defence and security forum in the South Pacific”. It is broadly focused on maintaining US hegemony by “coordination of actions against security threats in the region”. The PIF’s Secretariat now attends those meetings.
The MFAT briefing document noted that China pushes its own mini-lateral architecture in the region, which it says is “duplicative and undermines the region’s existing approaches and organisations – for example, the China-Pacific Islands Foreign Ministers Meeting… [redacted]”
It states that New Zealand’s public position on such regional meetings is that “engagement should take place in a way that advances Pacific interests, supports regional institutions and that the PIF is encouraged to participate in any forum”.
However, a former regional diplomat told In Context that, behind closed doors, Pacific leaders are encouraged to minimise engagement with bodies outside the Western sphere of influence.
“There is an implicit understanding in talks with Pacific leaders that engaging with China too much risks their existing bilateral ties with New Zealand and Australia,” he said under conditions of anonymity.
Leaders see exclusion as breathing space
For most Pacific leaders, the exclusion of both China and NATO-aligned Western states gives temporary breathing space needed to make Pacific-centred decisions this week.
The Office of Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr has acknowledged the decision to exclude Dialogue Partners allows leaders to “focus on the critical intra-regional issues at this year's forum, including the High-Level Political Talanoa, the Ocean of Peace Declaration and the Pacific Resilience Facility”.
Palau, one of only three Pacific nations to recognise Taiwan as a country, alongside the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu, will host next year’s PIF Leaders Meeting.
In agreeing with the dialogue partner meetings deferral, Samoa's caretaker Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata'afa told media the PIF needed “some more time for the region to put a new process in place, so that we can effectively engage with our partners going forward, not now, but the later stage”.
Significant members of civil society also recognised the need for the deferral.
Pacific Conference of Churches General Secretary Reverend, James Bhagwan, told Pacific journalist Nic Maclellan over the weekend: “I think the incoming chair of the Forum, the Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands, has been quite wise. I see this as an act of Pacific self-determination: this is a space now for the Pacific to talk.
“I know there are those who would wish to be here, but this is now really a Pacific Islands Forum. Our leaders will have no distractions, apart from what civil society and the media bring to them, but we hope that adds to their conversations.”
A PIF High-Level Persons group charged with overseeing the review of regional architecture had travelled around the Pacific in the lead-up to the PIF Leaders Meeting, getting feedback from nations about how the PIF could be improved and how best it should engage with states outside the region.
Common themes recorded were a need for PIF agencies to support national governments and not replicate or compete with them, as well as the need for robust mechanisms to safeguard against foreign pressure to act against Pacific nations’ interests.
A statement by the Cook Islands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Immigration (MFAM), after engaging with the Group in June, said participants in the process, had “reaffirmed the Cook Islands’ commitment to regionalism but stressed the importance of reforming existing institutions to improve delivery, align with national priorities, and enhance accountability.
“They also highlighted the need to preserve Pacific political leadership and ensure space for Pacific Island countries to deliberate and make decisions free from undue external influence.”
Analysts and commentators this week will be looking at whether foreign states with a diplomatic presence in the Solomon Islands will seek bilateral engagements with those present at the PIF Leaders Meeting, disregarding the move to sideline them.
Aotearoa is hi-jacking Pacific Islands interests and we should be excluded from future regional meetings. Our neocon politicians, are compradors for the US and sacrifice the national good, to serve the imperialist aims of this fading hegemon. And what's so disheartening, is that a change of government, won't see a change of direction. Unless the Greens, become a stronger force in electoral politics. But Labour, no optimism there.
Aotearoa and Australia, must finally wake up, to our geographical location in the South Pacific. We are in the Southern hemisphere and a part of the global south. Unlike the zionist entity, which still regards itself as european, our neighbours are Asians and Polynesians, not europeans. Although Australia is even more reluctant, to give up their "white status."
Cast the genocidal enabler adrift and we can cease being complicit, in the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza.
Free free Palestine 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸
Good to see the smaller Pacific Nations assert their rights. Thanks for this update.