Pacific Island Forum Meets

An international organization of the states of the Southern Pacific have long teamed up to protect their interests on the international stage. Here is the account of their latest meeting:

The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) is holding its 36th annual summit meeting in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea from Tuesday to Saturday to consider the final draft of the Pacific Plan on regional cooperation and give further direction to Forum mandates in political, economic, trade and social issues. The PIF (known until Oct. 27, 2000 as the South Pacific Forum),a key political organization in the Pacific, brings at an annual meeting the 16 heads of government of the independent and self-governing states in the Pacific.

PIF has been around since 1971 and consists of Australia, the Cook Islands,Fiji, Nauru, New Zealand, Tonga and Western Samoa (now Samoa, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Vannuatu Solomon Islands, Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated State of Micronesia and Palau. The meeting was stemmed from a desire by leaders to address common issues from a regional perspective and to give their collective views greater weight in the international community.