Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare accused President Joe Biden of treating him with disrespect as a defense of his refusal to attend a White House summit as China works to undercut the traditional friendliness between the United States and Pacific Islands country.
“I am not [going] to go sit down there and listen to people lecture me,” Sogavare told reporters, according to Tavuli News video of his Wednesday press conference. “They must change their strategies. How these meetings are arranged, they will give you three minutes to talk and then you go and listen to them lecture you about how good they are.”
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Sogavare skipped the U.S.-Pacific Islands Forum Summit this week, even though it was scheduled to be convenient for him and other leaders who attended the high-level United Nations General Assembly meetings last week. Sogavare — who signed a controversial security pact with China last year, to the alarm of the United States and Australia — argued that Biden shows less respect than Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, and other leaders he has met.
“Albanese gave me one hour,” he said. “Xi Jinping gave me one hour. They treat us like leaders. Not to put us in a classroom-like setting and lecture us.”
The Solomon Islands has held historical and strategic significance for U.S. leaders since the Second World War, when U.S. forces attacked Guadalcanal to prevent imperial Japanese troops from establishing an “airstrip [that] would jeopardize the vulnerable oceanic lifelines connecting America and Australia,” as author Joseph Wheelan put it in his history of the "battle that turned the tide" of the war. Sogavare’s secretive pact has renewed those fears — Albanese’s predecessor said last year that Australia would regard a Chinese military presence in the country as a “red line” — but the defiant prime minister touted his growing cooperation with Xi during his appearance at the U.N..
“We applaud [China] for their initiative in accelerating the implementation of the 2030 Agenda through their Belt and Road Initiative, Global Development Initiative, Global Security Initiative and Global Civilization Initiative,” Sogavare said Friday, referring to Xi’s signature foreign policy initiatives. “Solomon Islands is grateful and appreciates the ongoing support from our bilateral and multilateral partners, in particular People Republic of China who has become our leading infrastructure partner.”
Biden’s team cited “deep moral, strategic, and historic interests” in the Pacific Islands region in the lead-up to the summit while noting they were “disappointed” that Sogavare would refuse to make a stop in Washington when he was already in New York. They acknowledged also that China’s growing clout had galvanized their diplomatic efforts in the region.
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“Our national interests are tied to a free, open, vibrant, and dynamic Pacific region and that the United States is a Pacific power that is here to stay,” a senior administration official said. “But there’s also no question that there is some role that the PRC has played in all this. No question that its assertiveness and influence, including in this region, has been a factor that requires us to sustain our strategic focus.”
Sogavare claimed that “nothing came” of the meeting last year and emphasized that his foreign minister attended in his place. “To say that Solomon Islands is not represented at the meeting is wrong,” he said.