Australia and Papua New Guinea (PNG) yesterday signed a security agreement that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his counterpart, James Marape, said showed the closeness of the two nations.
The deal is designed to bolster Papua New Guinea’s internal security through more assistance in policing, defense and the judiciary as the Pacific islands’ largest nation seeks to develop its economy.
Amid strategic competition between China and the US in the region, PNG in May signed a defense deal with the US to upgrade its military bases, and is boosting trade ties with China.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Marape told a press conference with Albanese in Canberra that the agreement with Australia showed they were “brother and sister nations,” but added that PNG would not pick sides and had a foreign policy of “friends to all.”
Albanese said the deal “will make it easier for Australia to help PNG address its internal security needs and for Australia and Papua New Guinea to support each other’s security and the region’s stability.”
He paid tribute to the support PNG’s population gave to Australian service members during World War II, and said it was a defense relationship forged through sacrifice.
“For our interests going forward, we have no closer friends than Papua New Guinea,” Albanese said.
PNG’s judiciary, public service and borders were established by Australia before PNG became an independent nation 48 years ago, Marape said.
“You have always given support to us. What happens up north of your borders has deep, deep shared effect, benefit, consequences, on our region,” he added.
Australian Minister for International Development and the Pacific Pat Conroy told the Australian Broadcasting Corp Australia would spend A$200 million (US$131 million) on police training and infrastructure to help PNG double its police force to 10,000 officers.
Australian and other Commonwealth nation police will be hired by PNG to fill gaps in about 50 police management roles on short-term contracts.
The agreement says that enhancing PNG’s capabilities contributes to “Pacific-led regional security and stability,” and that the two nations will prioritize consultations with each other on PNG’s need for security-related equipment, infrastructure and training.
As China has sought to boost its security presence in the Pacific islands, signing deals to equip and train police in Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, where it is a large infrastructure lender, Australia has said security should be provided by Pacific countries.
The Australia-PNG deal says the two nations would consult if there is a threat to peace in the Pacific or an external armed attack on either party.
Conroy said it was “very strong” language that was comparable to commitments in Australia’s security alliance with the US.
The deal also covers classified information sharing, critical infrastructure, cyber, maritime and aviation security, and health.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS