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US House Republicans add Pacific nations deals to bill ‘countering Communist China’
- A federal budget impasse has hindered funding for the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau as Beijing deepens ties in the strategically vital region
- Inclusion of Pacific nations deals in China bill is ‘encouraging sign’ that more lawmakers realise need for urgent passage, expert says
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Khushboo Razdanin Washington
House Republicans added the Compacts of Free Association (Cofa) to their newly prepared ‘countering Communist China’ bill amid a months-long delay in approving promised funds for three strategically vital US-allied Pacific island nations.
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A congressional budget impasse has hindered funding for the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau, but that could change if the draft bill by the Republican study committee, a group of more than 150 conservative lawmakers, were to pass.
The legislation was earlier expected to be introduced in the House on Thursday. But the session was adjourned until Friday after the lawmakers voted for a short-term funding measure to avert a partial US government shutdown.
First signed in the 1980s with the three island nations, the Cofa agreements provide Washington exclusive military access to strategic swathes of the western Pacific in exchange for economic help.
Cleo Paskal, an Indo-Pacific expert, described the inclusion as an “encouraging sign that more members of Congress realise that this needs to be passed as soon as possible, whatever legislative cycle available”.
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