The Pacific Islands Forum is meeting in the Cook Islands, with a host of regional and global issues on attendees' minds, says Pacific Correspondent Barbara Dreaver.
New Zealand will be the last of the 18 Pacific Islands Forum member countries to arrive at the regional meeting in Rarotonga today and, like the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu, the delegation is missing a prime minister.
“Not a great start to the forum,” says Steven Ratuva, Professor at Canterbury University’s Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies.
But he said Pacific leaders will understand why New Zealand’s incoming Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who is still firming up the shape of his coalition government, won't be there.
Outgoing Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni and Gerry Brownlee from the incoming National government will represent New Zealand.
Vanuatu’s new Prime Minister Charlot Salwai faces political uncertainty back home. Along with Cyclone Lola recovery, the Solomon Islands Prime Minister is tied up with the upcoming Pacific Games and there is no word on why Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape isn’t attending.
Ratuva said it’s a bit of a blow to the unity of the organisation.
“Especially this time when there is a lot of geopolitical dynamics in the region, that may also be a reason why some countries are not going,” he said.
Anna Powles, Senior Professor of Security Studies at Massey University, said geopolitical competition is impacting the ability of Pacific countries to maintain stability in the region.
“Regional unity is under a greater duress, greater threat, now than we have ever seen in the past,” she said.
That is reflected in the scale of this year’s forum. There are over 700 delegates, and aside from member countries there’s a host of high level representation from dialogue partners like the US, UK, China, India, Singapore, Norway, Germany and Turkey, among others.
Powles said those countries, which have their own agendas, will all want face time with the leaders in an already crowded atmosphere.
“We need to be really careful that strategic competition doesn’t further dilute unity within the Pacific Islands Forum and doesn’t undermine and disrupt Pacific diplomacy going forward," she said.
Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver is in Rarotonga for the Pacific Islands Forum. (Source: 1News)
"Pacific countries, we know, represent one of the largest voting blocks within the United Nations for instance, and so external actors - other countries - are going to seek Pacific support on issues that are important to them."
Freshening up Rarotonga Treaty
That includes security. On the agenda is a freshening up of the outdated Rarotonga Treaty, signed in 1985, which made the Pacific a nuclear-free zone in the midst of the Cold War.
Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown said in this day and age “those tensions have again escalated in terms of the tensions between the US, China and now the conflict occurring in the Ukraine, the conflict in Israel and Gaza, (and) the increase in military positioning of countries like the US, Australia and the UK”.
He was talking about the AUKUS agreement, a trilateral security partnership where the UK and US are helping Australia buy nuclear-powered submarines.
Concern from some Pacific leaders over whether this breaches the Rarotonga Treaty has prompted Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to unsurprisingly bring a 70-strong delegation to convince them otherwise.
Other issues which the Pacific countries don’t all agree on is Japan’s ongoing release of treated radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant.
Then there’s the appointment of Baron Waqa, former President of Nauru, as the Forum’s new secretary general.
1News was the first to flag numerous issues with Waqa, including the fact he had sacked judges, imposed draconian media policies and is part of an ongoing Australian Federal Police investigation over bribery.
The issue is a sensitive one as Waqa’s appointment was one of a number of peace-making initiatives to ensure the Micronesian countries, which had been feeling sidelined, didn’t walk away from the regional body.
Ratuva said if the Micronesia group of leaders feel their candidate is being undermined then potentially it could jeopardise unity again.
“It's probably going to be something that the forum has to think seriously and very critically about,” he said.
Where the Pacific leaders hold strong is their commitment to issues around climate change – although Australia, as it does every year, is expected to push for a watering down of the communique language.
Despite the influences and the challenges, the Pacific Islands Forum remains a powerful group – and the host Cook Islands is determined to keep it that way.
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