US official Richard Verma was in Sydney last week.Credit:Janie Barrett
A senior US official,Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Richard Verma,during a visit to Australia urged PNG to turn down the offer from Beijing. “That sort of security guarantee comes with consequences. It comes with costs. And we’ve seen that the Chinese commitment in defence or investment comes with a high cost. That’s what we’d say to PNG,” he told this masthead in an interview.
He stated openly that “it is a competition” for influence in the region between the People’s Republic of China on one hand and the US and its allies including Australia on the other,and that “we have to compete aggressively”.
PNG’s Foreign Minister Justin Tkachenko revealed last week that his government was in early negotiations over a policing deal with Beijing. “We deal with China at this stage only at the economic and trade level,” said Tkachenko. “They are one of our biggest trading partners,but they have offered to assist our policing and security on the internal security side. They have offered it to us,but we have not accepted it at this point in time.”
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When this news provoked criticism,Tkachenko sought to reassure Canberra but said the offer from China was still under consideration:“We will not jeopardise or compromise relations with our traditional security partners”.
Australia and the US both signed security deals with PNG in recent months. The PNG opposition raised the suspicion that the government of Prime Minister James Marape might be considering using Chinese weapons and security forces to keep itself in power unconstitutionally.
Verma,in Australia last week after visiting the South Pacific,said:“We would like to see people choose security arrangement or investment opportunities or advanced connectivity with countries that play by the rules,that live up to the international standards. China has shown that it is not doing that. China has shown that it’s not interested in the modern rules-based order.”