Tue, Jan 30, 2024 page1

• PNG, China in talks on policing, security deal, minister says

  • Reuters, SYDNEY
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  Papua New Guinea (PNG) is in early talks with China on a potential security and policing deal, Papua New Guinean Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Justin Tkachenko said yesterday, weeks after deadly riots in the South Pacific nation’s capital.

  Amid jostling between Washington and Beijing for influence in the Pacific, the biggest Pacific Island nation, PNG, has previously said that Australia and the US are its security partners, while China is an important economic partner.

  China approached PNG in September last year with an offer to assist its police force with training, equipment and surveillance technology, Tkachenko said in an interview with Reuters. Talks continued last week.

  

  People leave shops with looted goods amid a state of unrest in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, on Jan. 10.

  Photo: AFP

  “We deal with China at this stage only at economic and trade level. They are one of our biggest trading partners, but they have offered to assist our policing and security on the internal security side,” Tkachenko said.

  PNG is to assess if the Chinese offer duplicates security and policing assistance already being offered by Australia and the US, he said.

  “It is still in early stages of negotiation with our Commissioner of Police and our Minister of Internal Security,” he said. “They have offered it to us, but we have not accepted it at this point in time.”

  The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

  China is a “strong economic partner” of PNG and the two nations formed diplomatic ties in 1975, Tkachenko said.

  PNG last month signed a A$200 million (US$132 million) security deal with Australia to boost policing and days later Papua New Guinean Prime Minister James Marape told an investment conference in Sydney that he had not held talks with China on security when he visited Beijing in October last year.

  PNG had chosen Australia and the US as security partners, he said.

  Riots in PNG’s capital, Port Moresby, earlier this month left at least 16 dead, with major retail stores burned and looted, after police held a strike over pay. Marape’s government called in the PNG Defence Force to restore order, but did not seek Australia’s help.

  The Chinese embassy complained to PNG over the safety risk to Chinese citizens living in Port Moresby.

  PNG in May last year struck a Defense Cooperation Agreement with Washington during a visit by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, giving the US military access to PNG ports and airports.

  Tkachenko said PNG would not do anything to jeopardize its defense and security relationships with Australia or the US, and was not a “fence-sitter.”

  Riots in the neighboring Solomon Islands in 2021 saw China strike security and policing pacts with the administration of Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare a year later, alarming Washington and Canberra.

  Australian Minister for International Development and the Pacific Pat Conroy yesterday pledged A$35 million in policing assistance to neighboring East Timor during an official visit, amid concern in Canberra that Beijing is again aggressively targeting the police and security sectors in the Pacific.

  Conroy today is to visit Nauru, which earlier this month switched diplomatic ties from Taiwan to Beijing.
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