Pacific leaders at summit fail to reach unanimous condemnation of China's ballistic missile launch

KOROR, Palau -- Leaders of Pacific nations agreed at their annual regional summit to register collective “concern” about China’s launch of a ballistic missile into their waters, they said Thursday, but failed to reach unanimous agreement on the statement and stopped short of a sterner rebuke of Beijing's actions. The willingness of the Pacific Island Forum's member countries and territories to agree during this event to a joint reproach of China for the missile launch in July was seen by some as a litmus test for how much the geopolitical jostling in the region among major powers had destabilized relations between the group of mainly small island states. Leaders announcing decisions the group made during a private retreat day at their annual summit, held this year in Palau, said the island nation of Nauru — which has had warmer ties to China in recent years — dissented from the statement of concern. Further the country of Kiribati, whose leader was absent from this week's event and sent the country's recent former ambassador to China in his place, had no representative at all in the daylong retreat, according to New Zealand's Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. Luxon, however, downpl...