Samoan Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa has suggested it was unreasonable for China to expect a Pacific trade and security deal to be rushed through this week, as she warmly welcomed the new Australian government’s climate policy.
Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong (黃英賢) announced during a joint press conference in Samoa yesterday that Canberra would provide it with a new Guardian-class patrol vessel to replace the one that was grounded last year.
Wong’s second visit to the region since being sworn in last week signals the intensifying competition with China for influence, although the former climate minister has emphasized she wants to listen to and respect Pacific priorities.
Fiame played down the bilateral cooperation agreements her country signed when Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) visited the country.
Fiame said the signing ceremony was for bilateral programs and projects, most of which “had started a number of years ago, and it was a formalizing process.”
“It just seemed a bit abnormal because the minister of foreign affairs was here and there was this particular proposal from the Chinese, that they were seeking regional agreement on,” Fiame told reporters yesterday.
“Our position was that you cannot have regional agreement when the region hasn’t met to discuss it, and to be called in to have that discussion and to have an expectation that there would be a comprehensive decision or outcome was something that we could not agree to,” she said.
In a setback for China, Pacific countries declined to sign up to a sweeping regional economic and security deal proposed by Beijing, after a crucial meeting of Pacific foreign ministers and their Chinese counterpart on Monday. Ten Pacific countries were to be part of the deal.
Samoa’s position was that regionwide agreements must first be taken to the Pacific Islands Forum.
Fiame said she believed Pacific countries had concluded that “we need to meet as a region to consider any proposal that is put to us by our development partners that requires a regional agreement.”
Wong, who joined Fiame for a media conference after talks in Apia, praised Samoa’s leader for her “very wise intervention” on the issue.
“Your prime minister has shown a lot of leadership and wisdom, not only now, but I think in many of her statements about the importance of robust regional architecture, respectful regional processes to deal with some of the external circumstances we all find ourselves in,” she said.
Wong said Australia believed regional security was “an issue for the Pacific family.”
While each nation is sovereign, it is important to have “collective consideration” of decisions that could “ultimately have the potential to affect the nature of the security arrangements of the region,” she said.
China’s proposed deal, which was leaked last week, covered everything from a free-trade area with the region to providing humanitarian and COVID-19 relief.
It also laid out China’s vision for a much closer relationship with the Pacific, especially on security matters, with China proposing to be involved in training police, cybersecurity, sensitive marine mapping and gaining greater access to natural resources.
After consideration of the deal was deferred on Monday, China released a “position paper on mutual respect and common development with Pacific island countries.”
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly