The Pacific's peak diplomatic body looks set to exclude the United States, China and several other major countries from a crucial leaders meeting in Fiji next month in a move that could help shelter the gathering from intensifying geostrategic competition buffeting the region.
The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) leaders meeting is due to be held in Fiji's capital Suva in mid-July.
Australia is a full member of the forum and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has already declared he will attend.
In recent decades PIF has also held a separate in-person meeting with Dialogue Partners during the Leaders' Week.
The forum has 21 partners, including the United States, China, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Canada, India, Singapore and the United Kingdom.
But the ABC has been told that this year the in-person Dialogue Partners meeting will not be held during the forum leaders gathering in Suva.
It will likely be held separately later this year, although it's also possible that PIF will propose a virtual meeting for Dialogue Partners that week.
Either way, officials and politicians from countries outside the region will effectively be locked out of the in-person meeting in Suva, where Pacific Island leaders are set to grapple with a range of complex and fraught strategic issues.
One Pacific Island source said that officials — as well as the current PIF chair, Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama — were keen to ensure that Pacific leaders had "space" to resolve issues and decide on their key priorities without having to simultaneously navigate meetings with powerful outside players jostling for influence.
A second Pacific source confirmed Dialogue Partners wouldn't be invited to Suva, but said the decision wasn't aimed at reducing geopolitical tensions surrounding the meeting.
Instead, they said Mr Bainimarama wanted to make it easier for Pacific Island leaders to focus on key internal issues, including efforts to heal a painful rift over the leadership of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat.
Leaders in Suva will be asked to endorse a sensitive agreement that Mr Bainimarama helped negotiate, which will rotate the PIF Secretary-General position between subregions in order to stop Micronesian nations splitting from the forum.
The meeting in Suva is also significant because it will offer all Pacific leaders the chance for their first face-to-face gathering since the 2019 PIF meeting in Tuvalu, when Scott Morrison clashed with his Pacific counterparts over climate change.
Leaders will have to confront several sensitive geopolitical questions when they meet.
Australia has already flagged it wants the meeting to discuss the security pact that Solomon Islands has signed with China, which Canberra fears will open the door to a Chinese military presence down the track.
Samoa's Prime Minister Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa has also said that she would like the forum to discuss China's contentious push for a region-wide agreement with 10 Pacific states.
China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi tried unsuccessfully to convince several Pacific Island countries to sign up to the pact during his sprawling tour of the Pacific last month.
Removing 'a degree of distraction'
Solomon Islands has publicly backed the agreement, but other Pacific Island leaders have warned it could spark a new Cold War in the region and undermine the sovereignty of Pacific states.
On top of that, they'll discuss a draft "Blue Pacific" 2050 strategy and Vanuatu's push to get the International Court of Justice to issue an advisory opinion on climate change.
While partner countries have not always sent senior officials or leaders to the PIF leaders meeting, some high-profile players have attended in the past – including then-US secretary of state Hilary Clinton, who attended the 2012 gathering in Cook Islands.
The dialogue partner meetings have sometimes also been eventful.
In 2018 the then-chair of PIF, Nauru's President Baron Waqa, clashed angrily with a Chinese official who then stormed out of the room.
Tess Newton Cain from the Griffith Asia Institute's Pacific Hub said the move to keep the top level meeting focused on member states would "largely be welcomed" in the Pacific.
"It removes a degree of distraction and means that the leaders can focus on their deliberations and decision-making about some really critical issues," she said.
"As we know they will spend a whole day in retreat where the 'big' talking happens.
"But there will be many pre and side conversations in the lead-up to that and this gives everyone a bit more space, and to an extent, privacy to work."
'Pacific leaders must meet'
The ABC contacted the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat for comment, but it declined to respond.
The President of the Federated States of Micronesia, David Panuelo, told ABC News that the move made sense because the Pacific was still dealing with the fallout from the split over leadership.
"That's all the more reason the Pacific leaders must meet together, without having to worry about other countries competing for our time and attention, so that Pacific Islands can commonly understand one another and commonly agree with one another," he said.
