WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden will welcome New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to the White House next week for talks, his administration announced Thursday (Friday in Manila).

The visit, which comes after Biden’s maiden voyage to Asia as president, stands as “another example of our continued commitment to the IndoPacific,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

Jean-Pierre did not give a precise date for the talks.

Biden is eager to reinforce ties with allies in Asia, as a way of blunting China’s wider ambitions in the region.

Ardern’s US visit is primarily a trade mission, with five cities on the itinerary, but she said before her departure that she also hoped to address Pacific security issues.

“I can’t imagine a more important time for political engagement with the US,” she said.

Her trip comes after two deadly mass shootings that have shocked Americans — a racially motivated assault on a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York and the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

After New Zealand experienced its own mass shooting at mosques in Christchurch in 2019, which left 50 Muslim worshippers dead, Ardern’s government moved quickly to tighten gun laws.

On Tuesday, Ardern told late night talk show host Stephen Colbert: “When we saw something like that happen, everyone said, ‘Never again.’ And so then it was incumbent on us as politicians to respond to that.”