The United States will open an embassy in the Solomon Islands, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Saturday, sending more diplomatic and security resources to the Pacific as a counterpoint to China’s push for greater influence in the region.
Blinken, in Fiji for the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) virtual summit of regional leaders, heard their concerns about the need for genuine action on climate change and grievances that have long been ignored by larger nations.
“Fiji and all Pacific island nations are a vital part of the Indo-Pacific region,” Blinken told a news conference with Fiji’s interim Prime Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyu.
Sayed-Khaiyu noted that Fiji and the other Pacific nations are guardians of the world’s largest ocean continent, which was crucial to the well-being of everyone in the world.
“Despite this, Fiji and our small state neighbors have sometimes felt like a passing country,” he said.
“Small spots seen from planes of leaders en route to meetings where they talked about us and not us, if they talked about us at all,” he said, adding that he hoped the visit would mark the beginning of a more direct relationship between the United States. and the Pacific.
Blinken flew to Fiji after a meeting in Melbourne of the United States, Japan, India and Australia, in which the so-called Quad pledged to deepen cooperation to ensure an Indo-Pacific region free of “coercion”, a veiled blow against economic expansion and Chinese military.
“This is not the case that we are here, coming here, focused here for security reasons. It’s much more fundamental than that,” Blinken said. “When we look at this region that we share, we see it as the region for the future.”
China’s military push
A senior US government official told reporters that “there are very clear indications that (China) wants to create military relations in the Pacific.”
“The most urgent case right now is what is happening in the Solomon Islands. With China’s security officials attacking an increasingly besieged president in a way that has caused a lot of anxieties across the region,” the official said.
The Solomon Islands switched its diplomatic allegiance to China from Taiwan in 2019.
Violent protests erupted in the Solomon Islands capital Honiara in November after Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare refused to speak to protesters traveling from Malaita province, which opposed the diplomatic move to Beijing.
About 200 police and soldiers from Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Papua New Guinea arrived in Honiara just days after the riots at Sogavare’s request.
Sogavare accused the provincial government of Malaita, the country’s most populous province, of being “Taiwan’s agent”, and in December he survived a vote of no confidence in parliament.
Source: CNN Brasil
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