The annual meeting, which started last night with an official opening ceremony, has seen a number of leaders missing, with at least five member countries heading to Palau without top-level representation.

Brown, who arrived in Koror over the weekend after attending the inaugural Realm Leaders’ Meeting in Auckland on Thursday, expressed hope for positive outcomes to address member countries’ concerns.

He is expected to press fellow leaders to finalise long-debated decisions on regional architecture, strategic partner categorisation and the Pacific Resilience Facility.

Speaking to Cook Islands News from Auckland before departing for Palau, Brown said the Realm Leaders’ Meeting addressed individual member concerns as well as collective issues they hope to tackle at the Forum.

“I think the main areas that we agreed and discussed should be around issues to make sure that the Forum continues to be fit for purpose for its members, and that the focus should now be on deliverables rather than more strategising,” Brown told this newspaper.

He pointed to key regional initiative, such as the Pacific Resilience Facility, as areas where tangible progress is long overdue.

“It’s not really time for more pledges,” Brown said. “What we want now is actually some positive outcomes to address the concerns that our countries have.”

A central priority for the Cook Islands delegation is resolving the Review of the Regional Architecture (RRA), a process that has spanned several years.

Brown emphasised that leaders must lock in a clear structure for managing key development partners to ensure the Pacific maintains control over its strategic partnerships.

“The last three years we’ve been talking about the review of the regional architecture,” he said. “What I’d like to see is actually a decision made on the strategic partnerships that the region has with key development partners and the proposal for having a tier or a level of engagement with strategic partners, level one, level two, to be tied in with the amount of commitments that they have in supporting our region.”

“I’d like to see a decision made on that so that by the time New Zealand hosts next year, that framework is in place and enables us as Forum countries then to be clear about our engagement with those partners that we deem to be important, which would be in the level one category and those level two, who would have a lesser commitment, I guess, to the Pacific region.”

Dr Salome Taufa, director for governance and engagement at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, confirmed that the Review of Regional Architecture (RRA), which has been under discussion for several years, will be one of the major agenda items this week.

In a presentation to Pacific journalists attending the Forum Leaders’ Meeting in Palau, Dr Taufa explained that the review is being carried out in four phases and is currently approaching the end of phase three.

“We’re at the tail end of phase three, and phase four will be the implementation phase,” she said. “We’re hoping that all of the reviews will be done and the outcomes of those reviews will be considered by leaders.”

The outcomes of phase three are expected to be presented to leaders, paving the way for implementation under phase four, according to PINA.

A central component under the regional architecture review will be the Forum’s “partnership mechanism”.

Dr Taufa added that senior officials have been assessing the Forum’s partnerships and collaborating with development and dialogue partners to gather information that will guide the implementation of the Leaders’ Policy on Partnerships endorsed last year.

“The senior officials have been conducting this assessment of partners and they’ve been working with partners. Thanks to our partners, they’ve been very collaborative. They’ve been cooperating with us and our members in providing all the information that we asked for to undertake the exercise.”

The outcome of the assessment will be presented to leaders during their retreat.