Sogavare said he would dispatch foreign minister Jeremiah Manele to countries in the region to allay their fears about a Chinese naval base in the Pacific.
The Australian government, which opted to send Pacific Minister Zed Seselja, not Payne, to Honiara last week after it was initially blindsided by the draft agreement, said it had made its concerns clear.
“Our consistently stated view, including from the perspective of Australia’s national interests, remains that the Pacific family is best placed to meet the security needs of the region,” Payne and Seselja said in a joint statement.
Labor attacks ‘blunder’
Albanese used his morning’s campaign press conference in Brisbane to condemn what he described as Australian government inaction.
“This deal between China and the Solomons was foreshadowed last August, the government was warned. Yet, only in recent days did the government bother to send a junior person across to the Solomons,” he said.
Asked if he would visit the Solomons if elected, he said he would. “The problem is those relationships aren’t ones that can be done just during when there’s a crisis,” Albanese said.
Labor’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Penny Wong said the security agreement was the worst “Australian foreign policy blunder in the Pacific since the end of World War II”.
“This is our region, it goes directly to Australia’s national security and [Prime Minister Scott Morrison] should have taken responsibility,” she said.
Morrison said the claim that Solomon Islands was somehow under the control of Australia was offensive.
“They are a sovereign nation,” he said last week. “I respect their independence, and they will make their own decisions about their own sovereignty.”
Solomons says it needs the extra security
Sogavare, who is serving as Solomons Prime Minister for the fourth time and survived a no-confidence motion in December, has refused to say when the final text of the deal would be publicly released.
His government has denied claims by Opposition Leader Matthew Wale that China paid MPs $30,000 each to vote against the no-confidence motion.
He said extra security was necessary after anti-government riots in 2019 and 2021. “The capital was looted, with properties and lives lost,” he said. “We intend to beef up and strengthen our police capability and capacity to deal with any future instability.”
He quoted China’s foreign policy stance as “friends to all, enemies to none”, saying the Solomons was committed to the principle of “non-interference in the domestic affairs of another member state” – a foreign policy mantra inserted by China into its treaties around the world.
“The signing of the security co-operation with China is done in the best interest of the country,” Sogavare said. “It both complements original and bilateral peacekeeping arrangements with respect to the original security partners that we collectively trust to maintain peace and stability of the region.”
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Liberal MP Phillip Thompson, who served with the Australian 1st Battalion in the Pacific, accused Solomons of a cash grab.
“We’ve always been the big brother of the Pacific with all Pacific nations. We spent a lot of time in the Pacific, in Tonga, the Solomon Islands. We do a lot as soldiers do, and we help out the communities there,” he told the ABC on Wednesday.
“This is what I believe to be a clear kind of money grab from the Solomon Islands.”
The draft agreement released last month contained clauses that could allow China to request its navy ships be allowed to dock and refuel less than 2000 kilometres off the Australian coast.
A Chinese security presence in the region would drain Australian navy resources and threaten shipping lanes from the east coast of Australia to Asia in the event of a conflict.
US slams ‘serious risks’ to the Pacific
Sogavare has maintained that he would not allow China to establish a navy base in the country, but those assurances have not been enough for the White House. US Indo-Pacific chief Kurt Campbell is due to arrive in Honiara in the next two days. The announcement that the deal has been signed now appears to have scuttled any last-minute push to overturn the agreement.
Campbell met on Wednesday in Hawaii with US Navy Admiral John Aquilino and senior officials from Australia, Japan and New Zealand, where officials slammed the pact for “its serious risks to a free and open Indo-Pacific”.
His visit was intended to be the final part of a month-long campaign from Australian, US and New Zealand intelligence and national security services to warn Honiara against the deal. Sogavare dismissed the claims as “nonsense”.
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China’s foreign policy spokesman Wang Wenbin hit back at Campbell’s trip, saying: “We must point out that South Pacific island countries are not a backyard of any country, still less a pawn for geopolitical rivalry.”
“Pacific Island countries have the actual need for diversifying their external cooperation and the right to choose their cooperative partners,” he said. “Deliberately hyping up tensions and provoking confrontational blocs wins no support and attempts to obstruct cooperation with China is doomed to fail.”
Jacqueline Maley cuts through the noise of the federal election campaign with news, views and expert analysis. Sign up to our Australia Votes 2022 newsletter here.
Morrison defends Payne’s absence from Solomons as ‘strategic decision’
Source: Philippines Alive
