New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters says Western nations, including the United States and New Zealand, failed to understand swiftly enough the geopolitical importance of island nations in the South Pacific, leaving a power vacuum that allowed other countries to increase their diplomatic influence.
New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters comments during an interview with The Associated Press in his parliamentary office in the capital, Wellington , Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024. New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters comments during an interview with The Associated Press in his parliamentary office in the capital, Wellington , Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024.
“Like-minded countries like New Zealand will have to deal with that issue, because I know that some of these countries cannot pay it back,” he said. Small island nations in crushing debt to foreign powers give the larger country “the influence that was the design behind the loans in the first place,” Peters said.
However, exhortations from Australia and New Zealand for the island nations to remember their part in what is often called the “Pacific family” have at times irked leaders seeking to forge their own paths -– often with China’s help. This week, Kiribatifor the rest of the year, citing its ongoing elections -– but provoking questions from some analysts about whether its closer ties with Beijing, and increasingly aloof relations with Australia, were partly responsible.
“Go and ask the ordinary people in the hamlets, the villages, the small towns and hills of the Pacific and they’ll tell you what they prefer,” he said., a French territory where violence between pro-independence residents and French-backed authorities flared in May, killing nine civilians and two gendarmes.
Peters has not stated a view, although he expressed the need for “major economies to stay engaged in the Pacific,” underscoring New Zealand’s and Australia’s fears that France giving up New Caledonia would open a new vacuum and further threaten an economy that until recently was one of the Pacific’s most successful.
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