The Pacific is not a region of competition, but is a region of collaboration, said Cook Islands Prime Minister and chairman of the 52nd Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting, Mark Brown while welcoming media representatives from around the region in Rarotonga on Thursday.
He openly spoke about the influence of countries like US and China and how the media was reporting on the issue.
“We have seen the growing geopolitics in our region and the perceived influence of the US to combat the influence of China,” he said.
“They are not hearing what the Pacific voices are saying. We are here trying to look for opportunities to lift the economic prosperity of our people to participate in a growing economy.
“When we go to development partners who will provide us with that support, what we see in the media has nothing to do with the choices we have made by standing by these super powers, rather it’s portrayed in a way it was a growing geo-political interest in the region and that there is competition in the region.
“And we have said over and over again, we are not a region of competition, we are a region of collaboration.”
Mr Brown said Pacific leaders would work with development partners who were “willing to work on our terms”.
“The assumption that maybe Pacific Islands countries don’t know what they are doing is starting to sound very insulting and getting to a state of being offensive.”
“It’s the choice that our countries make independently as a sovereign independent state – these countries are 40–60-year-old – they are young in term of geo-national age of our countries.
“Our leaders of today, most of them now have grown up in a country that was free from colonialism – so we have a new generation of leaders in the Pacific, and they want to make sure that their people, their interests are represented properly and openly.”
