Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis signed a declaration of intent with his counterpart Mona Ainu’u on Wednesday in New Zealand at the end of a week-long trip to the region.
Niue – a tiny island northeast of New Zealand with less than 2,000 inhabitants – is the only self-governing territory in the Pacific with which Switzerland has yet to establish diplomatic relations, the foreign ministry said on Wednesday.
Establishing ties will notably allow Switzerland to enhance its role as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, Cassis said: by raising Niue’s case at the UN, Switzerland can give voice to one of its priority themes – climate change.
Niue, which along with the rest of its Pacific region is highly affected by climate change, is also geographically interesting: located at the centre of a triangle formed by the Tonga, Samoa and Cook Islands, it is at a spot where the US and France have been reinforcing their presence against a backdrop of tensions with China.
Indeed, geopolitical concerns were part of the strategy for the entire Asia-Pacific trip, Cassis said on Monday at a previous press briefing in Canberra with his Australian counterpart Penny Wong.
He affirmed that Switzerland was “a country that counts” and which “assumes its responsibilities” by cooperating with various actors.
Experts however consider Swiss influence to be limited in the region. “Relations are good and polite, but that’s it,” said Carl Ungerer, former programme manager at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy and former senior adviser to the Australian foreign minister.
Apart from the declaration of intent with Niue, no formal agreement was came out of the week-long trip, which began in Indonesia before continuing to Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.
Cassis also took advantage of his trip to meet Swiss Abroad living in the region. With around 26,000 people, the Swiss community in Australia is the largest in the entire Asia-Pacific region; some 7,200 live in New Zealand.