US President Joe Biden will meet 18 leaders from across the South Pacific when he visits Papua New Guinea in May, the country’s foreign minister said Saturday, signaling a renewed US drive to cultivate regional allies.
The United States and China are vying for influence in what was once a diplomatic backwater, but is increasingly seen as a vital space for commercial, political and military influence.
Papua New Guinea Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko said Biden would attend bilateral talks with his hosts and is “also having a meeting with the 18 Pacific Island leaders” from the Pacific Island Forum – a regional bloc of mostly small states that are scattered across the vast swathe of ocean.
The prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand will be among those attending.
Biden is set to become the first sitting US president in at least a century to visit Papua New Guinea when he touches down on May 22.
He is also scheduled to attend a G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan and a summit of the Quad – Australia, India, Japan and the United States –
in Sydney.
US special envoy Joseph Yun this week admitted that the United States was playing “catch-up” after years of relative neglect that saw
China’s influence across the region soar.
“We need to accelerate our catch-up,” he told the Hudson Institute.
“Any high level engagement is welcome,” he said, speaking before Biden’s Pacific meeting was confirmed.
“Let’s face it, it is a strategic competition between China and us,” Yun said.
Biden’s trip may also put the finishing touches on a US-Papua New Guinea Defense Cooperation Agreement that would allow more joint
training and the development of security infrastructure.
The region could prove vital in any possible military conflagration over Taiwan.