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SYDNEY — The Solomon Islands leader announced Wednesday that his country had signed a security deal with China, just days before a senior American official was due to visit the Pacific nation to try to scuttle the controversial pact.
The announcement, which followed last month’s leak of a draft deal, renewed fears from local opposition leaders, as well as Pacific countries including Australia, New Zealand and the United States, that the deal could lead to a Chinese military presence in the islands and increase the tensions in the region.
In a speech to parliament, Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare dismissed those concerns, insisting the deal would “bolster” the police’s ability to respond to crises such as the November riots that killed four people and many of them Capital was destroyed, including many Chinese. own shops.
‘Nothing left’: Solomon Islands burn amid new violence as Australian troops arrive
“Let me assure people that we reached an agreement with China with our eyes wide open, guided by our national interests,” Sogavare said. “We fully understand the fragility of peace, and our duty as a state is to protect all people, their property and critical national infrastructure.”
However, opposition leader Matthew Wale said he did not believe the PM’s promise that the deal would not result in a Chinese base in the country.
“I think this is the start of something more serious that’s going to happen in this region,” he told the Washington Post, adding that he feared Chinese military personnel could arrive in the country within weeks.
According to experts, the security agreement is the first of its kind for China in the Indo-Pacific.
Despite the leaked draft and last month’s “initialization” of the deal, American officials appeared surprised on Tuesday when China said the accord had been signed. The announcement came hours after the White House confirmed that Kurt Campbell, the National Security Council’s Indo-Pacific coordinator, would visit the Solomon Islands and two other countries in the region this week.
Located in a strategic but politically unstable part of the world and perhaps best known for the Battle of Guadalcanal in World War II, the Solomon Islands have been at the center of a geopolitical tug-of-war since they switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in the Year 2019. “The Switch,” as the decision is dubbed, underscored Beijing’s growing influence in a region traditionally dominated by the United States and Australia.
Wale said he believed the agreement would be finalized in mid-May, but it was rushed to be signed ahead of Campbell’s visit.
Shortly after China’s announcement, Campbell met with the US Navy’s region commander and senior officials from Australia, Japan and New Zealand in Hawaii to discuss the security agreement and “its serious risks to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” told NSC spokeswoman Adrienne watson
New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta called the agreement “unwelcome and unnecessary”.
“New Zealand has a long-term security partnership with the Solomon Islands and I am saddened that the Solomon Islands have nevertheless chosen to enter into a security agreement outside the region,” she said in a statement. “While such deals will always be the right of any sovereign country to conclude, we have made clear to both the Solomon Islands and China our grave concern about the deal’s potential to destabilize the security of the Pacific region.”
Concerns are particularly acute in Australia, which is about 1,000 miles from the Solomon Islands and has been the target of a Chinese trade war. Facing an increasingly assertive Chinese military in the region, Australia struck a pact with the United States and the United Kingdom in September to obtain nuclear submarines.
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The most strident reaction Down Under came from Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce.
“We don’t want our own little Cuba off our coast,” he told reporters. “It’s not good for this nation, it’s not good for this region.”
However, Prime Minister Scott Morrison dismissed his characterization, saying Sogavare had made it “very clear” that China would not establish a base in the Solomon Islands. But Morrison said the deal shows “the risk of China trying to meddle in our region.”
The Solomon Islands’ diplomatic U-turn to China away from Taiwan — and the associated allegations of bribery — angered many in the archipelago and combined with longstanding local grievances led to widespread rioting in November that left four people dead and many of the capital of Honiara burned to the ground.
Wale, the leader of the opposition, said he feared the security deal would lead to a crackdown on the country’s most populous province, Malaita – where there is strong opposition to the switch – and a return to the violence that reigned from 1998 to 1998 2003 claimed about 200 lives before Australia intervened.
“Malaita now sees itself as a target of this agreement and therefore its response will have implications for stability and unity,” Wale said, adding that Sogavare wants to “bring the province to his altar for worship.”
Wale also said sections of the local police force were unhappy with the deal, which could create a “division”.
The security deal could have domestic ramifications in Australia, which is in the middle of a six-week federal election campaign. Wale said he warned Australia about the deal last year but the country has been slow to respond – a claim Australian officials have denied.
“Australia definitely lost the ball,” Wale said.
On Wednesday, Australian Senator Penny Wong, shadow foreign secretary for the opposition Labor Party, criticized the Conservative coalition government for not doing more to scuttle the deal, which she described as “the worst failure of Australia’s foreign policy in the Pacific since late 2020,” the second world war.”
In his announcement Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin criticized the United States for “suddenly” planning to send senior officials to the region. The deal included cooperation on “maintaining social order,” humanitarian assistance and responding to natural disasters, he said, and was “open, transparent and inclusive.”
But when Wale asked Sogavare in parliament on Wednesday to share the text of the deal, the prime minister said he must consult China, which normally doesn’t reveal details of its security deals.
“Obviously that’s a no,” Wale said.
The deal struck “a weakness” for the United States, which as a maritime power had hoped to use the “third chain of islands” to trap China, Xue Xiaorong, a scholar at Fudan University, said in a published report Article last week referring to a Cold War-era US strategy to contain its Pacific rivals. The United States’ loss of influence in the Solomon Islands could trigger a “domino effect” in the region, he said.
In a sign of Solomon Islands’ renewed prominence, the United States announced in February that it would reopen its long-closed embassy in Honiara.
Anne-Marie Brady, a political scientist at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, said the deal shows Australia and the United States need to change how they approach the region.
“Kurt Campbell should expose Sogavares Bluff that he wants the security deal because he wants to diversify Solomon Islands’ security partners and invite Solomon Islands to sign a security deal with the US,” she said.
But Mihai Sora, a research fellow at the Lowy Institute, a Sydney think tank, said the United States would be better off trying to boost the country’s economy.
“The US Pacific really needs to show a positive path forward for engagement in the region, but also one that is underpinned by economic development and economic partnerships,” he said.
Christian Shepherd and Pei Lin Wu in Taipei contributed to this report.