Emphasis on diplomacy and development

Duncan Wilson

The United States acting Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs Glyn Davies says President Barack Obama’s emphasis on diplomacy and development presents a new approach to the Pacific region.
“I think we can see what President Obama has been saying, from the transition through to the inaugural address and now as President, a number of signs of renewed emphasis on the importance of diplomacy and development,” Davies told ISLANDS BUSINESS in Washington.
Davies said President Obama’s new Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “has already talked about the importance of the three-legged stool of our foreign policy—development, diplomacy and defence.
 “Two of those, development and diplomacy, are very much under her authority in the state department and she means to do a great deal more in the development area.
 “We’re reasonably confident that in the Pacific we’re going to be able to try some new things, with some new departures,” Davies said.
Davies also said the department was working very hard to ensure President Obama’s policy direction on climate change and clean energy “is translated into further activities, perhaps even assistance within the Pacific Islands”.
Davies said it was too soon to talk of “headline” policies in these areas as the administration had been in office less than two months.
However, Davies was willing to talk about assistance to Fiji, should the country hold elections that the Pacific Islands Forum recognised as legitimate.
Restore assistance: “[Following the 2006 coup], we did a couple of things that are pretty well understood at this stage, mostly because of our law which says thou shall cut countries off when there is a military coup.
“Part of our sanctions was to cut off military ties. So we did that and we also suspended the provision of direct assistance to Fiji, foreign aid if you will…
 “If we get to the stage where there is a credible kind of promise of elections occurring at some point in the not-too-distant future, including a timetable that passes muster with the Forum and with the US, the US will do what it can to help with that process and once that constitutionally constituted government is back in power in Suva, then we can restore our foreign assistance, we can restore our military assistance, and so on and so forth…we would love to get back to it but we can’t.”
Davies also said that the US relocation of 8000 military personnel to Guam would proceed as planned.
His comments contrasted with the concerns of certain Pacific politicians and businesses, reported elsewhere, that relocation might not have the same priority for the US as it battles the economic recession.
 “I’m pretty confident. In fact, on her first trip as Secretary of State, the first stop of that trip was when Secretary Clinton was in Tokyo and she signed the Guam International Agreement which really was the final step in formally launching this.
“[The Agreement] had a couple of moving parts to it but one of them was to fire the starting gun on this process of going with the transfer of Marines to Guam, so it’s going forward and it’s a joint US-Japan project, a massive project.
“The Japanese are supplying a lot of the resources for it and what we have been trying to do at the State Department is work hard to find ways for Pacific Islands states to get at least a piece of the economic benefit of it.”
Davies also answered other questions:
On interpreting the signals from Fiji regarding democratic elections:
 “Not very positively, and here we take our cue, first, middle and last from the Pacific Islands Forum. Commodore Bainimarama made a promise back in 2002 and he said by March 09 there would be parliamentary elections and lo and behold here we are in March 09 and we know there won’t be elections in March 09 and it is nothing short of tragedy.
“This very important part of the Pacific metropole, this nation of almost a million people, that is important economically and I would say politically for the rest of the Pacific, continues to really suffer from lack of representative democracy. And we’re beginning to see the flow-on effects for the Fijian people, certainly financially and economically.

PAPUA NEW GUINEA NEARS FULL TELECOM DEREGULATION Papua New Guinea is closer to full deregulation of its telecommunications sector, a stage that will see the opening up of its international gateway.  A call for public submission on Phase Two of the country’s ICT Policy was recently carried out by Telecommunications Minister, Patrick Tammur.  Documents relating to this move were posted on the popular PNG blog Masalai (www.masalai.wordpress.com).  “Today, I am releasing the Experts Report on the National ICT Policy Phase 2 Reforms,” Tammur said in a press release dated February 9, 2009.  “The report provides an informative and rigorous discussion on the key issues such as ICT regulation and proposes a number of significant recommendations for the continued reform of the ICT sector in Papua New Guinea.  “I welcome the report and commend the work undertaken by the Department of Communication and Information in developing these reforms,” Tammur said.  The recommendations, he added, have been developed in accordance with NEC Decision NG 21/2008 “which requires me, as Minister for Communication and Information, to report to the National Executive Council (NEC) by March 2009 with a timetable and mechanism for the introduction of Open Competition in the ICT sector”. When this edition went to press, the minister had yet to report to NEC.  The report, according to Tammur’s press statement, recommended “a number of significant changes to the competitive and regulatory environment to encourage effective and sustainable competition throughout the ICT sector”. The recommendations cover a range of important ICT issues, including: • the timely and comprehensive move to Open Competition underpinned by a new licensing regime; • liberalisation of the gateway services; • a new access regime for wholesale services; • removal of unnecessary retail price regulation; • a new universal access scheme to further enhance access to telecommunications services and in particular access to rural population; and • new institutional arrangements with the new ICT regulator with responsibility for regulation in the ICT sector.

Malaisse: “Even before the global economic slowdown, their economy began to slow and why was that? Because investors don’t want to invest in a state that is being led by a military dictator and there is this malaisse that we have seen develop in Fiji. So it’s nothing short of tragic, frankly, that we’re this far along and there seems to be an infinitely receding prospect of democratic and representative government.
“I’ve met with the Commodore a number of times and each meeting I come away dispirited and it’s not so much because of what he says about what he wants to do for the people of Fiji—some of those aspirations are laudable in terms of changes he would like to see brought to Fiji’s political system and society, but that’s no longer the point. One way that change can sustainably be made and this is recognised by the Forum and the Biketawa Declaration is through representative elections, representative government and that’s what he is denying the people of Fiji so that’s why I use the word tragic, it’s a real shame.
 “I was in Niue for the Forum and the regional shape of it all is that here are these countries beset by any number of massive challenges that they have to deal with—energy and environment, policing their exclusive economic zones, fisheries and so forth and they’re forced to spend so much of their time talking about these problems in their midst. So forget about what far away Washington thinks, what is most important I think is what the Islands of the Pacific say. Except Fiji, democracy remains a strong ongoing proposition in the Pacific. So democracy is alive and well in the Pacific despite the ongoing sore spot that is Fiji but we will continue to take our cue from the Forum.”
On the relationship between the US and New Zealand changing under the new National-led government in New Zealand:
“I think there is no reason why it shouldn’t go from strength to strength quite frankly. We have had some good conversations with the new government, currently through our embassy in Wellington, but also on some of the travel that has occurred. I think there is every prospect for the two countries to continue to strengthen relations. All the projects and issues we were working on before [the election] remain for us obviously, starting with the Pacific and the work there, but also including many of the global issues.
“I met with Prime Minister John Key before he was prime minister and he was quite straightforward about his desire to keep the relationship strong and also straightforward about some of the things that wouldn’t change in the relationship and so that was probably a good way for that to begin, with a complete understanding of what we could expect and he has been true to his word on all fronts.”