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With ten words Cook Islands Premier Mark Brown wrecked the credibility of the 53-year-old Pacific Forum.
‘We'll remove it,’ Brown, with media watching, told China's ambassador to the Pacific, Qian Bo, ‘I'll talk to you about it later.’
Brown was captured by Radio New Zealand in Tonga in the wake of the debacle about the forum mentioning Taiwan in its final communiqué. What Brown was effectively saying was that small Pacific nations would immediately bend to Beijing’s rage. And censor their annual communiqué. The earlier report is here, Chinese meltdown at Pacific Forum.
The basic problem for the forum and its secretary general Baron Waqa (a less than popular choice for the job) is that Brown has provided a public display of the forum shooting itself in the foot. A standard response for any future forum declaration or communiqué will be a question: ‘has this been cleared with China?’ Do Waqa’s orders, and some cash, come from Beijing now? And who gave Brown the authority over the whole forum?
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