US Coast Guard to board and search vessels for Papua New Guinea, in stepped-up Pacific role
Sign up now: Get insights on Asia's fast-moving developments
The US Coast Guard's broader role aims to boost maritime security in a region where China operates distant fishing fleets.
PHOTO: REUTERS
SYDNEY – United States Coast Guard officers patrolling Papua New Guinea waters will have authority to board foreign vessels suspected of illegal activity in the Pacific Island country’s economic zone without a Papua New Guinea officer on board, under an agreement giving the force more powers, it said.
The US Coast Guard is getting the broader role to boost maritime security in a region in which China operates large, distant fishing fleets, and is also seeking a security presence.
Chinese naval vessels regularly transit a narrow strait between Australia and its northern neighbour, Papua New Guinea, moving between Asia and the Pacific. Chinese vessels also sit off the Australian coast.
US and Australian defence and foreign ministers at an annual meeting on Saturday said the US Coast Guard would take on a bigger maritime security role across the Pacific Islands.
US Coast Guard officials told Reuters a maritime law enforcement agreement between the US and Papua New Guinea includes a new provision to allow US Coast Guard officers to board and search a suspect vessel on Papua New Guinea’s behalf, without the requirement for a Papua New Guinea law officer to be present as a “ship rider”.
“Operationalising that provision will take work, creation of standard forms and... effecting lines of communication between our nation’s command centres, but when that work is done, yes, the mechanism for expedited consent to board (without a ship rider) is there,” a US Coast Guard spokesman said in a statement to Reuters.
Although the US Coast Guard has ship rider deals with a dozen Pacific Island countries, periodically used to patrol for illegal fishing, the Papua New Guinea agreement is the first with the ship boarding provision for a nation with which the US does not have full defence responsibility.
Papua New Guinea has become a focus for the US after China struck a security pact with Solomon Islands in 2022.
Papua New Guinea signed a defence cooperation agreement with the US in May, and US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin announced the August deployment of a US Coast Guard cutter during a visit to the island nation last week.
Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape has said his country had been unable to patrol its 2.7 million sq km exclusive economic zone for illegal activities, ranging from drug trafficking to illegal fishing. His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Any fishing vessel fishing in the nation’s (exclusive economic zone) may be boarded – that is any flagged vessel – including Chinese-flagged,” the US Coast Guard spokesman said in the statement.
The Federated States of Micronesia, administered by the US in the post-World War II period before entering a compact of free association with the US four decades ago, struck a similar ship boarding provision deal in 2022.
In Australia on Saturday, Mr Austin, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and their Australian counterparts said the permanent deployment of a US Coast Guard cutter to the region in 2024 would assist maritime law enforcement.
French President Emmanuel Macron, in a speech in Vanuatu on Thursday, said illegal activity by foreign fishing fleets threatened the maritime sovereignty of small states and was part of a “new imperialism”, comments seen as referring to China.
China respected the sovereignty of Pacific Island countries, which were not the “backyard” of any country, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning said on Thursday. REUTERS
