HONIARA, Solomon Islands (PINA Nius) — The proposal to establish a Melanesian Spearhead Group Secretariat has been welcomed by former senior Solomon Islands Foreign Affairs official Bernard Bata\u2018anisia.<\/p>\n
Now senior adviser on political issues at the Fiji-based Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, Mr. Bata\u2018anisia said it is important that the Melanesian Spearhead Group has a secretariat.<\/p>\n
He said a number of decisions agreed on by Melanesian leaders and officials in the past have not been acted upon or implemented.<\/p>\n
In some cases, he added, these same issues and decisions kept reappearing on the agenda. This, he said, was due to the lack of a follow-up mechanism.<\/p>\n
“That is why it is important that a secretariat is established, to follow up on decisions made by the MSG leaders,” Mr. Bata\u2018anisia said.<\/p>\n
The Melanesian Spearhead Group was formed in 1986. At that time the group consisted of Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands. Since then Fiji has become a member, along with the main pro-independence Kanak group of New Caledonia, the FLNKS.<\/p>\n
Trade and economic issues have become a focus of Melanesian Spearhead Group activities. This led to the starting of a Melanesian Spearhead Group economic and trade officials meeting, which has concentrated on developing trade and transport links among the Melanesian countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The proposal to establish a Melanesian Spearhead Group Secretariat has been welcomed by former senior Solomon Islands Foreign Affairs official Bernard Bata\u2018anisia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55831\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}