The Latest Breaking News from David Panuelo

The United States said at a summit with Pacific island leaders on Wednesday that it had agreed on a partnership for the future with them and held out the prospect of "big dollar" help to a region where it hopes to stem China's expanding influence.

The Solomon Islands has told Pacific nations invited to a White House meeting with President Joe Biden it won't sign the summit declaration, according to a note seen by Reuters, prompting concern over the islands' ties to China.

Solomon Islands signals it won't sign on to an 11-point declaration negotiated by the United States and Pacific Island nations this week, dealing a blow to the White House ahead of a high-profile presidential summit with Pacific leaders in Washington.

The president of the Pacific island state of Micronesia denounced at the United Nations on Thursday Japan's decision to discharge what he called nuclear-contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station into the Pacific Ocean.

Washington should accept Pacific island priorities for the region, making climate change - not superpower competition - the most urgent security task, the region's leaders said in Hawaii, ahead of a meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden this month.

The agreement, which stops the region’s key diplomatic body, PIF, from splitting, lifts a ‘big dark, dark cloud that has been hanging over the Pacific’

The ABC understands Pacific Island leaders hope to strike an agreement to resolve leadership questions, reform the organisation and allow the forum to stay whole, after last year's threat by Micronesian nations to withdraw.

By the time Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s ten-day tour of the Pacific is over in early June, he will have met with leaders from all ten Pacific island countries that have diplomatic relations with China.

With bilateral successes but a multilateral failure, what lies ahead for Bejing's role in the Pacific?

China's government says it remains confident it can strike a sweeping trade and security agreement with 10 Pacific Island states despite being forced to shelve its proposed agreement, but a new position paper walks back previous references on joint policing, free trade and cybersecurity.

Beijing's hopes to developing a marine plan for fisheries holding police training fell short over some countries' concerns over increasing geopolitical tensions and threatening regional stability.