With Washington looking at countering the growing Chinese influence in strategically important regions around the world, US President Joe Biden will briefly visit Papua New Guinea (PNG) on May 22, officials from the Pacific island nation said on Thursday.

Biden’s stopover would be the first visit by a sitting US president to the resource-rich but largely undeveloped country of 9.4 million people just north of Australia. Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the nation in 2018.

The US President will halt in the capital Port Moresby for three hours on his way to Australia to attend the Quad leaders’ summit, a spokesperson from the PNG Prime Minister’s office said.

Biden is also expected to meet more than a dozen Pacific island leaders during his May visit.

Fourteen Pacific island leaders will meet in Port Moresby on May 22 with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and planning for Biden to also meet the region’s leaders during his visit was underway but not confirmed, a spokesperson for PNG Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko said.

The meeting will be a significant move in US efforts to push back against Chinese inroads in the region, and follows Biden hosting Pacific island leaders at the White House in September.

The Quad summit is being held in Sydney on May 24, with the leaders of India, Australia, Japan and the United States attending, Australia’s government announced earlier this week.

White House officials have been considering tagging on a Pacific islands stop to Biden’s travel to the G7 in Japan and the Quad meeting in Australia, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The United States last year stepped up its diplomacy and aid to the Pacific region after China struck a security deal with the Solomon Islands, and Beijing attempted but failed to forge a wider security and trade pact with 10 island nations.

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