The competition for influence in the Solomons has increasingly spilled into domestic security, raising concerns it could cause new instability.Ĭhina and Australia have been training Solomon Islands police and donating equipment, including water cannons gifted by China and guns courtesy of Australia. “The time has come for Solomon Islands to empower its police force, invest in stability and break the dependency it has on external security arrangements,” Sogavare said. Australian troops returned to the country at the request of its government in late 2021, after anti-government and anti-China rioting in the capital Honiara left its Chinatown torched. It is a three-year agreement that complements the Pacific country’s police cooperation with Australia and New Zealand, he said, adding it aims to increase the police force’s capabilities and will contribute to eventual self-reliance.Īustralia led a military intervention in the Solomon Islands from 2003 to 2017 after the country descended into lawlessness and ethnic strife at the turn of the century. Sogavare said Australia and the United States had nothing to fear from the police cooperation agreement with China. The South Pacific country, an archipelago about 2,100 kilometers northeast of Brisbane, Australia, grapples with crumbling roads, limited telecommunications and lack of basic healthcare. Under Sogavare, the Solomon Islands has sought to benefit from the rivalry between the superpowers by securing more development assistance. Neither China nor the Solomons has released the security agreement but a purported draft of it circulated online. It signed a secretive security pact with China last year, alarming the US and its allies such as Australia, who see the agreement as a possible prelude to a Chinese military presence in the region. Home to about 700,000 people, the Solomon Islands has become a hotspot in the escalating Sino-US competition for influence in the Pacific. The US, Australia and the Solomon Islands’ opposition leader last week called for China and the Solomons to make the policing pact public, underscoring their concerns that the agreement could undermine regional stability. China and the Solomon Islands signed nine agreements during Sogavare’s visit, including for police cooperation.
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