Albany Times Union (Sunday)

U.S. to boost influence with embassy in Solomon Islands

Plan is to thwart China from being embedded in area

- By Nick Perry

Wellington, New Zealand

The U.S. says it will open an embassy in the Solomon Islands, laying out in unusually blunt terms a plan to increase its influence in the South Pacific nation before China becomes “strongly embedded.”

The reasoning was explained in a State Department notificati­on to Congress that was obtained by The Associated Press.

The plan was confirmed by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a Saturday visit to Fiji, part on a Pacific tour that began in Australia.

Blinken later landed in Hawaii, where he will host the foreign ministers from Japan and South Korea to discuss the threat posed by North Korea, amid rising concerns over its recent missile tests.

The State Department said Solomon Islanders cherished their history with Americans on the battlefiel­ds of World War II, but that the U.S. was in danger of losing its preferenti­al ties as China “aggressive­ly seeks to engage” elite politician­s and business people in the Solomon Islands.

The move comes after rioting rocked the nation of 700,000 in November. The riots grew from a peaceful protest and highlighte­d long-simmering regional rivalries, economic problems and concerns about the country’s increasing links with China, after it switched allegiance from the self-ruled island of Taiwan to Beijing three years ago. Rioters set fire to buildings and looted stores.

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare survived a no-confidence vote the following month, telling lawmakers in a fiery 90-minute speech that he’d done nothing wrong and would not bow down to “the forces of evil” or to “Taiwan’s agents.”

The U.S. previously operated an embassy in the Solomons for five years before closing it in 1993. Since then, U.S. diplomats from neighborin­g Papua New Guinea have been accredited to the Solomons, which has a U.S. consular agency.

The embassy announceme­nt fits with a new Biden strategy for the IndoPacifi­c that was announced Friday and emphasizes building partnershi­ps with allies in the region as a way to counter China’s growing influence and ambitions.

The State Department said China had been “utilizing a familiar pattern of extravagan­t promises, prospectiv­e costly infrastruc­ture loans, and potentiall­y dangerous debt levels,” when engaging with political and business leaders from the Solomon Islands.

The State Department said it would at first lease space at an initial set-up cost of $12.4 million. The embassy would be located in the capital, Honiara, and would start small, with two U.S. employees and about five local staff.

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