‘Incredible bond’ shared with NZ, says US official
A top American diplomat described the United States’ relationship with New Zealand as ‘‘incredibly valuable’’ as she met Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern yesterday to discuss China’s influence in the Pacific and the war in Ukraine.
Ardern and ministers met US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman at the end of her whirlwind tour of the Pacific. It included trips to Tonga and the Solomon Islands, where she discussed new US embassies, as well as to Samoa and Australia.
‘‘We discussed the strong bilateral partnership between the United States and New Zealand on a wide range of issues or cooperation on maintaining a free open, secure and peaceful Indo-Pacific region, to holding Putin accountable for his war of aggression against Ukraine,’’ Sherman said after her meeting with Ardern.
‘‘We discussed China and we’ve discussed all the Pacific Islands that I went to, we discussed Ukraine and Russia.’’
Sherman also signed cooperative agreements with Economic and Regional Development Minister Stuart Nash and Emergency Management Minister Kieran McAnulty yesterday.
Nash met Sherman to sign the Framework Agreement, which provides new opportunities for New Zealand’s space sector and closer collaboration with Nasa. McAnulty and Sherman also acknowledged the signing of the memorandum of cooperation between the two nations’ emergency management agencies.
The US announced a refreshed focus on the Pacific region, which is at the centre of a geopolitical tussle, in an unprecedented address to the Pacific Islands Forum in July.
Sherman was asked whether New Zealand would ever be let back into the Anzus agreement, a security treaty with Australia and the US signed in 1951 but which unravelled in 1984 when New Zealand went nuclear-free. She said the US respected New Zealand’s independent foreign policy.