MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) 鈥 Australia and Papua New Guinea鈥檚 prime ministers on Tuesday began trekking into the South Pacific island nation鈥檚 mountainous interior to commemorate a pivotal World War II campaign and to underscore their current security alliance, which faces challenges from China's growing regional influence.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese received an elaborate traditional welcome when he arrived by helicopter at Kokoda Village with his Papua New Guinean counterpart James Marape.
The pair will walk 15 kilometers (9 miles) over two days along the rugged Kokoda Track where the Japanese army鈥檚 advance toward what is now the national capital, Port Moresby, was halted in 1942 in the wilds of the Owen Stanley Range.
鈥淚n forging a relationship of brothers and sisters, together as one we will go forward,鈥 Albanese told Australian Broadcasting Corp. as the pair set off from the village in tropical heat and humidity.
鈥淲e鈥檙e walking step by step, symbolizing our two nations walking together,鈥 Albanese added.
Marape said their 鈥渟hared journey today should send the world a message鈥 that Papua New Guinea wants peaceful coexistence.
Australia and its nearest neighbor, , forged closer defense ties in December when Albanese and Marape in the Australian capital, Canberra.
The signing was delayed by six months after a security pact between Papua New Guinea and the United States in the South Pacific nation over concerns that Papuan sovereignty was being undermined.
Marape said in December that his government鈥檚 security agreements with the U.S. and Australia did not mean he was siding with those allies in their strategic competition with China.
Albanese said Marape had assured him during at state dinner in Port Moresby on Monday night that Australia remained its 鈥渞eferred security partner.鈥
鈥淭his is a relationship that has never been closer, as symbolized by the fact that we鈥檒l be walking side-by-side down the Kokoda Track,鈥 Albanese told ABC in Port Moresby on Tuesday before flying to Kokoda Village.
Joe Biden had planned to become the first sitting U.S. president to visit Papua New Guinea in May last year, in a sign of the region鈥檚 growing strategic importance in the power struggle between the U.S. and China. But Biden canceled the visit to deal with a debt crisis in the U.S. Congress.
On top of disappointing Marape last year, last week by implying that the president鈥檚 army aviator uncle, Second Lt. Ambrose J. Finnegan Jr., had been after his plane crashed in Papua New Guinea during World War II.
Marape released a statement on Sunday saying that his 鈥減eople daily live with the fear鈥 of unexploded bombs left behind by a war that they had been 鈥渘eedlessly dragged into.鈥
Marape and Albanese will trek to a war memorial in the town of Isurava, the site of a bloody battle where U.S. and Australian troops fought the Japanese in August 1942.
Both leaders will commemorate Anzac Day at Isurava on Thursday, April 25 鈥 the date in 1915 when the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed on Turkey in an ill-fated campaign that provided the soldiers鈥 first combat of World War I.
