Pacific Islands Forum foreign ministers meeting in Fiji failed to reach an agreement on a joint statement criticising China’s actions after their controversial ballistic missile test last month.
The nuclear-capable missile carrying a dummy warhead was launched from a nuclear-powered submarine and travelled about 7,300 kilometres over several Pacific nations, before landing in waters close to Tuvalu’s exclusive economic zone.
The stumbling block to a Pacific consensus on the region’s response to China’s actions is widely believed to have been objections from Naoero, formerly Nauru, and Kiribati, with New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters claiming both nations were acting under Chinese influence.
Pacific Beat’s reporter in Fiji, Lice Movono, said Secretary General Baron Waqa declined to speak to the positions of other countries.
“We also asked him to speak as former president of Nauru. But he refused to discuss Nauru at all and even tried to stay away from speaking about Kiribati and initially had denied that there was tension.”
