The prime minister Papua New Guinea After the president defended the Pacific island Joe Biden it meant that he was “Adayams” ate his uncle’s body During the Second World War, he called on the United States to clean up the remnants of the conflict in the region.
“President Biden’s words may be a slip of the tongue; However, my country does not deserve to be labeled as such,” Prime Minister James Marape said in a statement on Sunday, referring to Biden’s comment about cannibals.
Speaking at an event in Pennsylvania last week, Biden said his uncle, Army Air Force aviator Ambrose J. Finnegan, had been “shot down in New Guinea.”
“They never found the body because there used to be – there were really a lot of cannibals in this part of New Guinea,” he said.
US military records Finnegan’s death has not been ruled a shoot-down or cannibalism, saying the plane was forced to land in the ocean off the northern coast of New Guinea for unknown reasons and that the three people who died in the crash have never been found.
A White House official told NBC News on Monday that the United States remains committed to the recovery and repatriation of the remains of U.S. service members killed in World War II and supports Papua New Guinea’s POW/MIA Accounting Agency. accounting for missing personnel contributed to the identification and repatriation of hundreds of servicemen.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates told NBC News In a statement last week, Biden said he was “proud of his uncle’s service in uniform, who lost his life in a military plane that crashed in the Pacific Ocean after takeoff near New Guinea.”
The Asia-Pacific was the theater of heavy fighting during World War II, with remains of bodies, wreckage, shipwrecks, tunnels and bombs still littering Papua New Guinea and other countries more than seven decades later. Marape noted that residents live in fear of being killed by unexploded ordnance every day.
“World War II was not the work of my people; nevertheless, they were dragged into the conflict unnecessarily, which is not their business.”
Marape said many unsolved mysteries of World War II remain in the seas, mountains and jungles of Papua New Guinea.
“I urge President Biden to urge the White House to clean up the remains of World War II so that the truth about missing servicemen like Ambrose Finnegan can be found,” he said.
Biden’s comments offended a key strategic ally of the United States in the Southwest Pacific, as it competes for influence in the region with China, which already has a security pact with the neighboring state. Solomon Islands. USA signed a security pact with Papua New Guinea last year.
Marape met with the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Sunday and the Prime Minister of Australia Anthony Albanese is visiting this week.