PORT MORESBY: United States President Joe Biden will meet 18 leaders from the South Pacific when he visits Papua New Guinea in May, a top regional diplomat said on Saturday, as the US and China vie for influence in the region. After the end of World War 2, the South Pacific was seen as a relative diplomatic backwater, but it is increasingly the arena for powers to compete for commercial, political and military influence. Papua New Guinea Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko said Biden would attend bilateral talks with his hosts and was "also having a meeting with the 18 Pacific Island leaders" from the Pacific Island Forum — a regional bloc of mostly small states that are scattered across the vast swathe of ocean.

https://www.manilatimes.net/2023/04/30/news/world/biden-to-meet-18-pacific-leaders-in-papua-new-guinea/1889250

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