US to open Solomon Islands embassy to tackle China’s ‘aggressive engagement’
- The State Department said the US was in danger of losing its preferential ties as China ‘aggressively seeks to engage’ elite politicians in the island nation
- Washington previously had an embassy in the Solomons for five years before closing it in 1993
The United States said 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 AP. It came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Fiji on Saturday midway through a Pacific tour that began in Australia and finishes in Hawaii.
The State Department said Solomon Islanders cherished their history with Americans on the battlefields of World War II, but that the US was in danger of losing its preferential ties as China “aggressively seeks to engage” elite politicians and businesspeople in the island nation.
The US previously operated an embassy in the Solomons for five years before closing it in 1993. Since then, US diplomats from neighbouring Papua New Guinea have been accredited to the Solomons, which has a US consular agency.