Papua New Guinea will see a doubling of US development assistance to $42 million. Read more at straitstimes.com.
SYDNEY - United States President Joe Biden will sign defence and surveillance agreements with Papua New Guinea , the island nation’s foreign minister said, on a visit that renews the strategic importance of the nation where Mr Biden’s uncle died in World War II.
Mr Biden will visit PNG capital Port Moresby on May 22 on his way to a summit of the Quad countries – the United States, Japan, India and Australia – in Sydney, the White House has confirmed. There he will meet 18 Pacific island leaders. “We will be able to utilise the US satellite security systems. Once we sign that, it will help monitor our waters, which we can’t at the moment,” he said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has visited the region three times, including a 2018 visit to PNG, but Beijing in 2022 failed to sign 10 nations to a security and trade deal. Historians have said PNG was essential to the US drive across the Pacific to liberate the Philippines in the war, and Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong has urged people to look at history to understand “the strategic importance of Pacific islands to Australia’s security needs”.
“A US-China conflict could play out across the whole Pacific including Melanesia and the Polynesian islands, not just in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, which puts PNG and the Solomons firmly in the spotlight,” he said.The US pledged a US$800 million economic assistance package after meeting with Pacific island leaders in 2022, which must be approved by Congress in negotiations not due to progress until autumn.
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