By Humeyra Pamuk and David Brunnstrom
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell will represent the United States at a summit of the 18-nation Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga next week and will also visit Vanuatu and New Zealand, the State Department said, as Washington seeks to boost ties with a region where it is in increasing competition with China.
Campbell, a key architect of U.S. Indo-Pacific policy, will be in the Tongan capital Nuku’alofa on Aug. 28 for the 53rd Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting, and engage Pacific Island leaders on the margins to discuss the U.S. Pacific Partnership Strategy launched in 2022, the department said in a statement.
He will then visit Vanuatu to dedicate the new U.S. embassy there, which opened last month. He will also highlight a U.S. Peace Corps project at a hospital and a repatriation of Vanuatu cultural artifacts, the statement said.
Campbell will conclude his regional trip with a visit to New Zealand, where he will co-chair a U.S.-New Zealand Strategic Dialogue meeting in Auckland on Aug. 30 and launch an inaugural High-Level Technology Dialogue.
Campbell is viewed as an intellectual author of then-President Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia” strategy aimed at rebalancing of U.S. diplomatic and military resources to the region.
He has frequently stressed the need to step up engagement with the Pacific region, warning that China, Washington’s main strategic competitor, is waiting in the wings to take advantage if it does not do so.
U.S. President Joe Biden has hosted two summits with Pacific Island leaders, but disappointed them last year when he canceled a trip to meet them in their region due to debt ceiling negotiations in Washington.
In February, the United States cautioned Pacific island nations against accepting assistance from Chinese security forces following a Reuters report that Chinese police were working in Kiribati, a remote atoll nation near Hawaii.
Chinese police have deployed in the Solomon Islands since 2022 after a secret security pact criticized by the United States and Australia as undermining regional stability. Concerns have been raised also over workers in military uniforms in Vanuatu after a Chinese company began logging there.
The leaders of Vanuatu and Solomon Islands visited China in July.
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and David Brunnstrom; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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