![\"Cook](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/4JRGXLT_Peters_Brown_jpeg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\nCook Islands PM Mark Brown and New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters held an informal discussion at Peters\u2019 private residence in Auckland on Friday, 20 March 2026\u00a0
\nPhoto: Supplied \/ Minister of Foreign Affairs\n<\/p>\n
Winston Peters has met “informally” with Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown at Peters’ home in Auckland.<\/p>\n
Four days ago, Peters’ office said they had no plans to meet Brown while he was in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
In a joint statement, they said they discussed “fundamental challenges facing the New Zealand-Cook Islands relationship over the past 18 months” though there appeared to be no resolutions.<\/p>\n
“Political dialogue between the two countries will continue in the coming weeks in order to determine whether these challenges can be resolved in the present circumstances,” it stated.<\/p>\n
“In the meantime, the Governments of the Cook Islands and New Zealand will not be providing further comment.”<\/p>\n
Christopher Luxon said on Thursday that he would not meet with Brown in any capacity, preferring to keep it between officials.<\/p>\n
“I’m confident we’ll get to a good place in the end, we’ve made some good progress recently, but I’m going to let our officials handle that progress,” he said.<\/p>\n
Addressing a room of dignitaries on Wednesday, Brown said his country was “growing in influence” globally on its “voyage of statehood”.<\/p>\n
“Our desire to pursue our own policies and interests have been reflected in our growing participation on the international stage,” Brown told a room of dignitaries.<\/p>\n
“There are times when we must pause and consider whether the conventions and evolved understanding between our freely associated states remain aligned … we find ourselves in such a moment.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cook Islands PM Mark Brown and New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters held an informal discussion at Peters\u2019…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":["post-338419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}