United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is making his first visit to the Pacific in five years, taking in Samoa, New Zealand, Tonga and East Timor.
The centrepiece of Guterres’ mission will be the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Leaders Meeting, being hosted in Nuku’alofa beginning on Monday next week.
While in Tonga, he will visit sites still recovering from the 2022 tsunami, engage in a PIF dialogue with leaders, as well as hosting bilateral meetings.
A spokesman for the Secretary-General hoped the visit would “raise awareness of the importance of climate action measures including early warning systems, adaptation and mitigation”.
“His visit will also serve as an opportunity to emphasise the impact of sea level rise in the region and beyond,” spokesman Farhan Haq said.
The Pacific sweep begins in Samoa on Wednesday, which also focuses on climate change, before a stopover in Auckland en route to the PIF Leaders Meeting.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Luxon said he was particularly keen to be updated on negotiations for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
“This is a fantastic opportunity for both parties to step aside and actually get to the table and put a ceasefire in place and actually start to resolve this conflict. It’s not going to happen through military action,” Luxon said.
New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters said he was having dinner with Guterres on Friday night.
“We’ll chat about what he’s interested in and what we’re interested in, but particularly about the Pacific,” Peters said, saying it would be “unpolite” to reveal their agenda in advance.
Peters’ hospitality will extend to offering Guterres and his delegation a lift to Tonga on the New Zealand Defence Force 757 on Saturday.
The NZDF 757s have been plagued by reliability issues, causing embarrassment to New Zealand.
In June, an engineering issue forced a 50-strong trade delegation bound for Japan to overnight in Port Moresby and fly back to Brisbane before hopping on an Air New Zealand flight for Tokyo.
Since that trip, the 757s have been used on other missions, but fly at a slightly slower speed and slightly lower altitude.
Asked whether Guterres had been informed of the planes’ history, Peters smiled and laughed, walking away.
Guterres will conclude his Pacific tour in Timor-Leste at the end of the month, a visit timed with the 25th anniversary of the UN-organised constitution. It is his first visit to the region since 2019, when he visited Christchurch in the wake of the mosques terrorist attack, travelling also to Fiji, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.