The Albany Gazette - China missile test top of agenda as Pacific diplomats meet in Fiji

Beijing gave only a handful of nations short notice before test-firing an intercontinental ballistic missile last month, flexing its military might in a region where it has long sought to expand its reach.

The rocket appeared to land in a patch of ocean somewhere between Solomon Islands, Nauru and Tuvalu, monitors have said.

It sparked condemnation from multiple Pacific leaders but the 18-member Pacific Islands Forum is yet to issue a formal response to the test.

New Zealand's outspoken Foreign Minister Winston Peters has pushed for a joint statement condemning the launch and told journalists before the talks that "we're going to be having an open dialogue here today".

"In the end, though, we'll see whether logic prevails in this debate, or whether the debate has already been settled by people having a predetermined position from which they will not move," he added.

Tuvalu, a diplomatic ally of Taiwan, is also calling for a joint statement and said it hadn't received notice in advance of the test.

"We don't want to be intimidated by any powers," Pasuna Tuaga, the country's Permanent Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Labour and Trade, said on the sidelines of the talks.

"That's not the way that we want to be treated," he said.

"That's why we want to send a very strong statement from the Pacific as a intercollective, because that would also strengthen our position."

Tuaga said the missile had landed "somewhere very close" to Tuvalu and that it had requested help from a number of powers -- including the United States and the Chinese -- in finding the dummy warhead.

Australia's Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in a radio interview before the meeting she hoped China took note of the "very clear response" already sent from the Pacific about the test.

"The majority of the Pacific Islands Forum did express concerns over China's ballistic missile test," she said.

However China-friendly nations Kiribati, Nauru and Vanuatu are understood to have little interest in formally criticising one of their major partners.

- 'Outsiders meddling' -

A watered-down formal response may come from Friday's meeting in Fiji's capital Suva, highlighting the need for regional security but without mentioning the test, or China.

The meeting of foreign ministers comes ahead of a full leaders' meeting in Palau in September.

Palau -- an archipelago of hundreds of islands around 800 kilometres (497 miles) west of the Philippines -- is among the few nations to have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, the self-ruled democracy which Beijing claims as part of its territory.

Diplomats also plan Friday to discuss which key partners should be allowed to attend that meeting.

Last year, the Solomon Islands banned all partner nations from attending the leaders' meeting in Honiara, in response to China demanding Taiwan be excluded.

Wellington's top diplomat Peters warned Friday "there's always a tendency for outsiders to meddle" in the Pacific.

(S.Perez--TAG)