By James Redmayne
APIA, Samoa (Reuters) -Britain’s King Charles and Queen Camilla flew into Samoa late on Wednesday, for a visit during which the monarch will be offered the title of high chief and attend a summit of Commonwealth nations, following a six-day tour of Australia.
Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa welcomed the royal couple on the runway, along with other dignitaries, before a band played “God Save the King”, Britain’s national anthem.
Charles then inspected a guard of honour drawn from Samoan police. The country has no armed forces.
Charles, who also met the prime minister privately at the airport, is the symbolic head of the Commonwealth, a group of 56 countries with roots in the British empire.
His first visit to Samoa coincides with the annual Commonwealth heads of government meeting.
Small states form more than half the members of the grouping, many of them Pacific island nations grappling with the threat of rising sea levels caused by climate change.
The leaders are expected to make a declaration on protecting the ocean, with climate change a key topic for discussion.
Britain has said it will not bring the issue of reparations for historical transatlantic slavery, demanded by Caribbean countries, to the table at CHOGM, but is open to engage with leaders who want to discuss it.
HIGH CHIEF TO BE
Charles will also be offered the title of high chief during his visit and will be shown the impact of rising sea levels in the Pacific island nation.
Lenatai Victor Tamapua, a Samoan chief and member of parliament, said he planned to offer the title of ‘Tui Taumeasina’ to the monarch during a traditional ceremonial welcome to Charles and Queen Camilla on Thursday.
He will later lead Charles along a walkway on a mangrove reserve, highlighting the impact of climate change on Pacific nations and their communities.
“The king tide today is about twice what it was 20, 30 years ago,” Tamapua said. “And that is affecting our land, and it’s eating away at some of the areas that are so hard for us to control, and people (have to) move inwards, inland now.”Charles has spent a lifetime campaigning on environmental issues and in 2020 described global warming and climate change as the greatest threat that humanity has faced.
The offer of the title of high chief for Charles comes after he was accused of “genocide” by an Australian Indigenous senator at Parliament House in Canberra on Monday.
The royal tour of Australia was Charles’ inaugural visit to an overseas realm as sovereign, his first major foreign trip since being diagnosed with cancer, and the country’s first visit by a British monarch in 13 years.
(Reporting by James Redmayne in Apia; Additional reporting by Lewis Jackson; Editing by Michael Perry and Clarence Fernandez)
