By EDDIE OSIFELO
UNITED States of America has assured Solomon Islands to offer visa service at her reopened Embassy in Honiara.
Currently, Solomon Islanders have to travel to Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea or Fiji to get their visas to travel to USA.
Kurt Campbell, Deputy Assistant to the President and Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, National Security Council, confirmed this to media yesterday to look into the visa issue.
“We understand that that’s what the Solomons people are working for.
“We’re going to do everything possible to get this done as quickly as possible,” he said.
Furthermore, U.S. Embassy Honiara Chargé d’Affaires – Russell Comeau said the consular services that will remain there for the time being primarily because the demand isn’t here for such services.
“To be quite frank, if we get to a point where the demand necessitates opening up, bigger, fuller concert operations, we’ll certainly look at that,” he said.
The USA was asked whether to consider visa waiver in the future like Solomon Islands is benefiting from European Union at the moment.
Campbell said his strong representative from the State Department will need to study it before making any decision on visa waiver.
“Isn’t that in the future for us as organizers considering that we don’t have many plans for visa probably that could be an obstacle.
“So, I want to just give kudos to your government, because this is an issue that your foreign minister raised directly with us today,” he said.
His eight-member delegation left Honiara yesterday to Vanuatu.
