Beijing: China and the Cook Islands signed an motion plan final week for a worldwide strategic partnership between the 2 international locations, the Chinese Foreign Ministry stated on Monday (February 17), offering additional particulars on an settlement that ought to increase issues in New Zealand.
New Zealand, an American companion who has constitutional ties with the Cook Islands, has expressed difficulties on the rising presence of Beijing within the southern Pacific among the many fears that would destabilize western affect.
The Chinese Premier Li Qiang and the Prime Minister of the Cook Mark Brown islands attended the signing of a sequence of bilateral cooperation paperwork, together with the motion plan, final week within the northern Chinese metropolis of Harbin, he informed journalists The spokesman for the Ministry Guo Jiakun.
The motion plan will present a roadmap for cooperation between the 2 international locations within the areas of the economic system and the setting, tradition, society and different areas, stated Guo throughout a standard press convention.
The cooperation between China and Cook Islands shouldn’t be aimed toward third events, nor ought to or not it’s interfered by third events, he added.
The Cook Islands, an autonomous peaceable nation midway between New Zealand and Hawaii, can work together with the worldwide neighborhood as an impartial state. But New Zealand supplies finances assist and undertakes to defend the island nation, whose persons are residents of New Zealand.