Pacific Islands Forum leaders ended their meeting in Koror, Palau, on Thursday with a communique that "registered concern" at a ballistic missile test that overflew member states without adequate notice. The paragraph does not name China, does not use the word condemn, and carries a footnote recording that the Republic of Naoero, as Nauru has been known since May, "disassociates itself" from it.
The leaders "called on all States undertaking ICBM testing to ensure transparency and reassurance including through the provision of advance notification of at least 24 hours in accordance with international practice", the communique says, and asked that any test respect the Treaty of Rarotonga and last year's Blue Pacific Ocean of Peace Declaration. Kiribati, which had joined Nauru in blocking a stronger statement at the foreign ministers' meeting in Suva in August, was represented in Palau only by a special envoy and was not in the room for the leaders' retreat.
The test in question took place on 6 July. A Chinese navy submarine fired a nuclear-capable ballistic missile, a JL-2 or JL-3 according to the Arms Control Association, about 7,000 kilometres across the Pacific to a splashdown just outside Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone, inside the nuclear-free zone the Rarotonga treaty created in 1986. The ABC reported it overflew the economic zones of the Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru and Kiribati. Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Papua New Guinea were told through diplomatic channels hours beforehand; the United States was not told at all. China's navy called the launch "a routine arrangement of the annual training" that was "not directed at any specific country or target".
Australia and Palau pushed hardest for a formal condemnation. "They sent a missile next to French Polynesia, another one next to Tuvalu, crossing over our airspace," Palau's president and forum chair Surangel Whipps Jr said at a joint press conference with Anthony Albanese on Thursday, referring to China's 2024 and 2026 tests. "They never bothered to tell us that that's what's happening." A unified Pacific voice, he said, "is critical in getting Beijing to respect sovereignty, to respect transparency and to be a responsible partner".
Albanese had called the July test "not the act of a friend" on his first day in Palau. Asked on Thursday how it differed from the United States, which fires test missiles into Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, he said the situations were "very different": "The US gives proper notice, has an agreement with the Marshall Islands. What we saw with the Chinese test was a firing of a missile with very little notice." That distinction is not accepted everywhere in the region. Kiribati's president Taneti Maamau told his parliament this week that America "has been bombing, and testing its bombs" in the Marshall Islands, "islands near us, and why don't we ask questions or criticise America?"
Beijing's answer came on Thursday from foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun, who said Palau had "repeatedly raised this issue in an ill-intentioned attempt to hijack the position of other member states of the Pacific Islands Forum. It will not have its way." Whipps replied that "there's no sensationalism, it's just stating the facts". China's envoy had earlier warned of "consequences" over the presence of Taiwan's foreign minister at the forum as a development partner. Palau is one of three forum members that recognise Taiwan; Nauru switched to Beijing in January 2024.
New Zealand's prime minister Christopher Luxon said he would rather have a statement that "summarises the vast consensus" than none. "I don't want to see this normalised. When you fire a nuclear missile into the nuclear-free Pacific, that's not something we want to see." The closing ceremony produced its own footnote when the emcees at first failed to acknowledge Kiribati's envoy, David Teaabo, and corrected the omission minutes later. Fifteen of the 18 members were represented by their leader; Fiji, Vanuatu and Samoa sent ministers.
Australia's spending in Palau ran alongside the diplomacy. Albanese announced a $600 million package against transnational crime and drug trafficking, which the leaders backed "in principle" as the Waqa Moana mechanism, $31.4 million for a solar plant and $16.4 million for grid upgrades in Palau, $25 million over five years for the regional environment program, and $15.6 million to prepare Pacific athletes for the Brisbane Olympics. Leaders also sorted the forum's partners into two tiers, with China, the United States and France among 13 designated strategic partners and Taiwan kept at development-partner level.
The communique circulating on Friday is marked an unofficial final, cleared by leaders at the retreat. New Zealand hosts the next forum in 2027, and Nauru, which dissented from the missile paragraph, hosts the one after that.
