Pacific bloc backs joint police plan, maintains Taiwan ties

Pacific leaders endorse policing initiative, resist China's Taiwan sidelining, and tackle climate change and deep-sea mining at regional summit.

Pacific leaders endorsed a major joint policing initiative and rebuffed moves from China's allies to sideline Taiwan on Friday, as they wrapped up a regional summit in Tonga.

Security was a focal point at this year's Pacific Islands Forum, an unwieldy bloc of U.S. partners, China friends and states still tied to Taiwan.

U.S.-ally Australia convinced its Pacific neighbours to back a landmark plan giving it a greater role in training the region's police.

The scheme would create up to four regional police training centres and a multinational crisis reaction force, backed by $271 million in initial funding from Australia.

Although hailed as a "godsend" by nations such as Fiji, others closer to Beijing were cooler on the idea.

"The only thing that we do not agree to is that it imposes conditions on our own domestic security," Solomon Islands Foreign Minister Peter Agovaka said on Friday.

Critics suggested the deal was less about police, and more about carving up the region to keep China on the margins.