Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — Congresswoman Uifa’atali Amata is emphasizing the United States partnerships, cooperative opportunities, and shared ideals with Pacific Island nations, in a follow up statement regarding the recent Pacific countries summit in Washington, D.C.

Aumua Amata, who is a co-chairman of the Congressional Pacific Islands Caucus, last month spoke at the Pacific Island Conference of Leaders (PICL) in Honolulu, and continues to raise these key issues of Pacific policy, especially the need for U.S. engagement and understanding the extent of China’s strategic efforts. 

Here are some of the points she makes: 

•           China must be impelled to earn friendship, influence and a fair return on honest investment, instead of practicing the dark arts of subversive statecraft leading to economic and political confrontation that escalates risk of conflict.

•           Opening new embassies, increasing development assistance, sending the Peace Corps back to the islands and bringing students from the Pacific to study in the U.S. are all long overdue but welcome initiatives unveiled at the summit.

*          China can and must be stopped from exporting corruption and disruption as tactics to convert nations dedicated to rule of law one-by-one into surrogate regimes surrendering in servitude to Beijing’s totalitarian imperial ambitions.

*          The summit also may have breathed some new life back into the Pacific Island Forum and paved the way for it and perhaps new multilateral alliances to provide hands-on facilitation of security and defense cooperation, as well as investment and development throughout the region.

With America adopting a “whole-of-government” approach to the Pacific, it is only fitting that the island governments adopt a “whole-of-region” approach to its relations with outside powers, Amata said. “My dear friend Samoa Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa said it best when she stressed that outside powers must work through regional institutions, not try to pick off countries one by one. The Unites States demonstrated at the Washington summit that it intends to heed that admonition.

“As we now dedicate ourselves to stand with the Pacific community, American Samoa is once again the Polynesian island territory south of the equator in the epicenter of Oceania that is the platform for projection of American interests in the region, Amata said.

Download attachment to read Amaata's full statement.