Violence threatens Pacific security

HONOLULU, Hawaii (Pacific Islands Report) — Despite increased ethnic violence and transnational threats in the Pacific during the past year, the U.S. Commander of the Pacific said he’s optimistic about the region’s future security.

Admiral Dennis Blair said the United States Pacific Command and the region in general are well equipped to handle security and cooperation issues with other island nations to promote peaceful development in the Pacific.

“We know how to deal with these regions,” Blair told the leaders of 22 Pacific nations and territories attending the 6th Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders in Honolulu.

“We have a direct commitment to the external defense of the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and Palau. We have direct contact through multi- and bi-lateral exercises with the armed forces of other island nations,” he said.

The leaders gathered this week near Waikiki in a meeting sponsored by the East-West Center’s Pacific Islands Development Program in an effort to find solutions to issues of globalization and governance.

Blair noted the ongoing relationship the U.S. government has with Pacific island countries and said he would like to continue cooperation with the region.

“We build schools in Tonga and Kiribati,” he said. “We’ve worked on making water supplies better in the Marshall Islands, which provides good training for our military engineers and benefits your armed forces.”

However, Blair said, the region will be faced with future challenges that will continue to threaten peace and security.

Among the transnational threats facing the region are drug trafficking, illegal immigration, piracy, and other international criminal activities.

“The organizations that run this are well financed,” he said. “They will go to the weakest spot they can find. They will attack all of us. They don’t play by the rules. The only way we can work against these organizations is by cooperation in the intelligence, law enforcement, and military areas.”

Blair said ethnic violence in Fiji, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea’s Bougainville also threaten security in the region’s future.

“I’ve been encouraged by the response of the islands in the region and the declarations in the last meeting of the Pacific Forum, in which a set of principles adopted by countries in the region included democratic principles (and) a set of targeted measures to deal with actions that were going in the wrong direction.”

Overall, Blair said he doesn’t foresee any major threat to the region in the near future.

“The island states will work to bring prosperity to their people in areas that will be relatively peaceful at the strategic level. It has great advantages in terms of not affecting the work that can be done by individual states by themselves and as a region,” he said.

“It is also a disadvantage because without a big crisis or strategic struggles, the attention is not on this part of the world. It’s a double-edge sword, but on balance I think it provides a relatively peaceful backdrop for the challenges you face in dealing with environmental concerns and building prosperity,” he said.

Blair commended the East-West Center for organizing meetings such as those of the Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders that focus on a regional approach to the challenges of the Pacific. – (Craig DeSilva)