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A security alliance between China and the Solomon Islands has sent shudders throughout the South Pacific, with many worried it could set off a large-scale military buildup or that Western animosity to the deal could play into China’s hands, Associated Press reported.

What remains most unclear is the extent of China’s ambitions. 

A Chinese military presence in the Solomons would put it not only on the doorstep of Australia and New Zealand but also in close proximity to Guam, with its massive U.S. military bases.

China so far operates just one acknowledged foreign military base, in the impoverished but strategically important Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti. Many believe that China’s People’s Liberation Army is busy establishing an overseas military network, even if they don’t use the term “base.”

The Solomon Islands government says a draft of its agreement with China was initialed last week and will be “cleaned up” and signed soon.

The draft, which was leaked online, says that Chinese warships could stop in the Solomons for “logistical replenishment” and that China could send police, military personnel and other armed forces to the Solomons “to assist in maintaining social order.”

The draft agreement specifies China must approve what information is disclosed about joint security arrangements, including at media briefings, according to the Associated Press.

The Solomon Islands, home to about 700,000 people, switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to Beijing in 2019 — a move rejected by the most populous province and a contributing factor to riots last November.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken responded in February by saying that Washington would reopen its embassy in the capital, Honiara, which has been closed since 1993, to increase its influence in the Solomons before China becomes “strongly embedded.” 

Both China and the Solomons have strongly denied the new pact will lead to the establishment of a Chinese military base. The Solomon Islands government said the pact is necessary because of its limited ability to deal with violent uprisings like the one in November.

“The country has been ruined by recurring internal violence for years,” the government said this week. 

But Australia, New Zealand and the US have all expressed alarm about the deal, with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern describing it as “gravely concerning.”

David Panuelo, the president of nearby Micronesia, which has close ties to the U.S., wrote an impassioned letter to Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare asking him to rethink the agreement, Associated Press reported.

He noted that both Micronesia and the Solomon Islands were battlegrounds during World War II, caught up in the clash of great powers.

“I am confident that neither of us wishes to see a conflict of that scope or scale ever again, and most particularly in our own backyards,” Panuelo wrote.

But the Solomon Islands police minister mocked Panuelo’s concerns on social media, saying he should be more worried about his own atoll being swallowed by the ocean due to climate change.

Sogavare has likewise dismissed foreign criticism of the security agreement as insulting, while labeling those who leaked the draft as “lunatics.”

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the agreement aims to maintain the safety of people’s lives and property, and “does not have any military overtones,” saying media speculation on the potential development of a base was groundless.

Euan Graham, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies based in Singapore, said China has been pursuing such a port facility for some five years as it aims to expand its naval presence in the South Pacific as part of Beijing’s long-game of seeking to become the dominant regional power.

“If they want to break out into the Pacific, at some point they will need the logistics capability to support that presence,” Graham said. “We’re not talking about war plans here; this is really about extending their presence and influence.”

Unlike the base built in Djibouti, where China has commercial interests in the region to protect, Graham said any operation in the Solomon Islands would likely be less substantial, according to the Associated Press.

“It’s quite a subtle and interesting geopolitical game that’s emerged in the South Pacific,” he added. “And I think the Chinese have been very successful, if you like, in outflanking the United States and Australia in an influence competition, not a military competition.”

China’s base in Djibouti was opened in 2017. China doesn’t call it a base, but rather a support facility for its naval operations fending off piracy in the Gulf of Aden and for its African peacekeeping operations. It boasts a 400-meter (1,300-foot) runway and a pier big enough to dock either of China’s two operating aircraft carriers.

The base, with 2,000 personnel, allows China to position supplies, troops and equipment in a strategically crucial region, while also keeping an eye on US forces that are stationed nearby, Associated Press reported.

The mayor of the besieged port city of Mariupol put the number of civilians killed there at more than 5,000 Wednesday, as Ukraine collected evidence of Russian atrocities on the ruined outskirts of Kyiv and braced for what could become a climactic battle for control of the country’s industrial east, Associated Press reported.

Ukrainian authorities continued gathering up the dead in shattered towns outside the capital amid telltale signs Moscow’s troops killed civilians indiscriminately before retreating over the past several days.

In other developments, the US and its Western allies moved to impose new sanctions against the Kremlin over what they branded war crimes.

And Russia completed the pullout of all of its estimated 24,000 or more troops from the Kyiv and Chernihiv areas in the north, sending them into Belarus or Russia to resupply and reorganize, probably to return to the fight in the east, a US defense official speaking on condition of anonymity said, according to the Associated Press.

In his nightly address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that the Russian military continues to build up its forces in preparation for the new offensive in the east, where the Kremlin has said its goal is to “liberate” the Donbas, Ukraine’s mostly Russian-speaking industrial heartland. He said Ukraine, too, was preparing for battle.

“We will fight and we will not retreat,” he said. “We will seek all possible options to defend ourselves until Russia begins to seriously seek peace. This is our land. This is our future. And we won’t give them up.”

Ukrainian authorities urged people living in the Donbas to evacuate now, ahead of an impending Russian offensive, while there is still time.

“Later, people will come under fire,” Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said, “and we won’t be able to do anything to help them.”

A Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence estimates, said it will take Russia’s battle-damaged forces as much as a month to regroup for a major push on eastern Ukraine.

Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boichenko said that of the more than 5,000 civilians killed during weeks of Russian bombardment and street fighting, 210 were children. He said Russian forces bombed hospitals, including one where 50 people burned to death.

Boichenko said more than 90% of the city’s infrastructure has been destroyed. The attacks on the strategic southern city on the Sea of Azov have cut off food, water, fuel and medicine and pulverized homes and businesses, Associated Press reported.

British defense officials said 160,000 people remained trapped in the city, which had a prewar population of 430,000. A humanitarian relief convoy accompanied by the Red Cross has been trying for days without success to get into the city.

Capturing Mariupol would allow Russia to secure a continuous land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.

In the north, Ukrainian authorities said the bodies of least 410 civilians have been found in towns around Kyiv, victims of what Zelenskyy has portrayed as a Russian campaign of murder, rape, dismemberment and torture. Some victims had apparently been shot at close range. Some were found with their hands bound.

At a cemetery in the town of Bucha, northeast of Kyiv, workers began to load more than 60 bodies apparently collected over the past few days into a grocery shipping truck for transport to a facility for further investigation.

Zelenskyy accused Russia of interfering with an international investigation into possible war crimes by removing corpses and trying to hide other evidence in Bucha.

“We have information that the Russian troops have changed tactics and are trying to remove the dead people, the dead Ukrainians, from the streets and cellars of territory they occupied,” he said in his address. “This is only an attempt to hide the evidence and nothing more.”

Switching from Ukrainian into Russian, Zelenskyy urged ordinary Russians “to somehow confront the Russian repressive machine” instead of being “equated with the Nazis for the rest of your life.”

He called on Russians to demand an end to the war, “if you have even a little shame about what the Russian military is doing in Ukraine.”

More bodies were yet to be collected in Bucha. The Associated Press saw two in a house in a silent neighborhood. From time to time there was the muffled boom of workers clearing the town of mines and other unexploded ordnance, according to the Associated Press.

Police said they found at least 20 bodies in the Makariv area west of Kyiv. In the village of Andriivka, residents said the Russians arrived in early March and took locals’ phones. Some people were detained, then released. Others met unknown fates. Some described sheltering for weeks in cellars normally used for storing vegetables for winter.

The soldiers were gone, and Russian armored personnel carriers, a tank and other vehicles sat destroyed on both ends of the road running through the village. Several buildings were reduced to mounds of bricks and corrugated metal. Residents struggled without heat, electricity or cooking gas, Associated Press reported.

In principle, the five ruling parties have agreed to forge an electoral alliance for the May 13 local elections. In recent weeks, top leaders of these parties have been meeting almost daily to agree on the alliance’s modus operandi. But nothing has come of it so far. 

The intra- and inter-party dynamics are constraining top leaders’ wishes to cement the alliance. The rival Nepali Congress faction led by Shekhar Koirala is dead against any kind of electoral partnership with the left forces, putting the party leadership in a fix.

Similarly, there are strong sentiments in the Congress rank and file against such an alliance. They reckon that allying with the left forces could weaken the party’s base in the long-run. 

Already, party members have warned leadership against a poll alliance with left forces in Chitwan. 

In the 2017 elections, the NC had supported Maoist candidate Renu Dahal (daughter of Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal) for the post of mayor of Bharatpur Metropolitan City, Chitwan, much to the chagrin of party cadres.

The Maoist party again wants to ally with the Congress in Bharatpur, but the party’s Chitwan district chapter has decided to field its own candidate. They say they will this time not be forced into supporting a candidate from other parties. 

It remains to be seen how the Congress leadership will assuage its cadres in Bharatpur and other local units across the country.

Congress President and Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba knows forging an alliance with the left parties is going to be complicated, but he wants to do it anyway. 

If the ruling coalition partners are not offered an olive branch, he fears, they could band together with the main opposition, CPN-UML, which could reduce Congress votes in the national elections.

At this point, Ram Chandra Poudel, former rival of Deuba for party president, is the only top Congress leader who whole-heartedly supports the idea of poll alliance.

The potential alliance has also been hindered by the fact that the CPN (Maoist Center) and CPN (Unified Socialist) are finding it hard to gauge their local-level strength to bargain for seats with the main ruling party. 

In the 2017 local elections, of 753 local units, the Maoist party had won in 106 through alliances with different parties.

At the time, there was no discussion of a national-level electoral alliance, unlike this time.  

Meanwhile, the Unified Socialist is a new party formed after a split in the UML. Around 10 percent of the UML elected representatives have joined the Unified Socialist and its local strength remains a mystery.

A senior Maoist leader says despite marathon talks at the top level, there has been no progress on the modality of poll alliance, nor has there been any agreement on seat-allocation. “I am not hopeful of a formal alliance,” says the leader, who didn’t wish to be named.  

He speaks of the difficulty of working with the Congress at the local level as the ideology, orientation and thinking of the two parties are polar opposite. 

“We are not sure the Congress supporter will vote for Maoists candidates, or vice-versa,” he says.

Maoist leader Dev Gurung says second-rung leaders will work on the modality of alliance when top leaders reach an agreement.

One option ruling parties are discussing is forging an alliance based on the 2017 poll results. The Maoists and Unified Socialist are of the view that in the case of six metropolitan cities and 11 sub-metropolitan cities, the decision on alliance should be taken from the central level. In other municipalities, they suggest, local leadership can decide.  

To facilitate the electoral partnership, the five-party alliance on April 5 formed a cross-party panel, led by senior Congress leader Poudel. To manage resistance at the local level, the Congress is encouraging its leaders in provinces and districts to explore the possibility of alliance through consultations with other parties. 

The five parties have decided to forge an alliance in more than two-dozen districts. As they are still talking, the Congress has instructed its local level leadership to delay the process of finalization of candidates. 

In 2017, the central leadership had not fixed such alliances, even though there were some partnerships at the local level. The Maoist party had allied with the UML, NC, and Madhes-based parties. 

Of 753 local units, the UML had won in 292, the Congress in 263, and the Maoists in 106.  

After the 2017 local poll results were publicized, UML forged an alliance with the Maoists in the parliamentary elections to beat the NC. The two left forces then went on to merge to form the Nepal Communist Party (NCP). The party broke down a little after a year, which not only revived the erstwhile UML and Maoist Center but also gave birth to a third offshoot, Unified Socialist, led by Madhav Kumar Nepal. 

Political analyst Krishna Khanal says the Maoists and Unified Socialist are seeking electoral alliance because they feel insecure about their electoral prospects. “The two parties are facing an existential crisis and are desperate to forge an electoral alliance,” he says. 

Despite its alliance in the previous elections, the Maoist party didn’t fare well, and the Unified Socialist is facing elections for the first time.

It is not just the Maoists and Unified Socialist who are desperate for an electoral alliance though. In truth, the NC also needs these parties’ support to beat its main rival UML.

If the communist forces were to come together, it would be difficult for Congress to even replicate the results of 2017; there was no left alliance at the time of the last local elections.

Deuba is trying to cajole his party leaders and cadres into a poll alliance, reminding them of the defeat Congress faced in the 2017 parliamentary elections due to the left alliance.

But some observers say it is better for the parties’ long-term prospects to fight elections separately.

“An electoral alliance may benefit some parties in the short-term, but it would be detrimental to the long-term party-building process,” says Puranjan Acharya, a political analyst.

Political experts reckon a high number of political parties is encouraging the culture of electoral alliances. They say each political force views elections through its own narrow prism.

“We have more parties than we can sustain. We have to bring down their number, which in turn will be a departure point for political stability,” says Bhojraj Pokharel, former chief election commissioner. 

Nepal’s electoral alliances are not based on similarities in ideology, conviction and belief, he says.

“Rather, they are purely driven by the intent of getting good electoral outcomes. Forging such electoral alliances does not guarantee their longevity,” Pokharel says. “Alliance among like-minded political parties is natural but among opposite forces is not.” 

Nepali Ambassador to Pakistan Tapas Adhikari held a meeting with General Qamar Javed Bajwa, Chief of Army Staff of Pakistan, at the latter's office in Rawalpindi on Tuesday.

During the meeting, the duo discussed matters related to mutual interest and measures to improve the bilateral ties between the two countries, according to Nepali Embassy in Islamabad.