It's one of those diplomatic arguments which might strike a lot of people as obscure and bewildering.
But the sometimes fierce dispute over which countries will (and will not) be able to attend the Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting actually tells us quite lot about regional geopolitics, and what the Pacific's future might look like.
So why do so many countries care so much about what happens at PIF next month?
Why has there been a flurry of headlines about it?
And why does this sometimes obscure contest about who gets to meet who (and where) actually matter to people in the Pacific?
What is this meeting exactly?
The Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting is the region's most important political gathering.
It's the only time each year when leaders from every single Pacific Island state get together in the one place to discuss a host of issues, from climate change, to the rules which govern regional mobility and fishing rights, to political unrest in places like New Caledonia and West Papua.
Critically, the Pacific Islands Forum includes two countries which aren't always regarded as "Pacific island states" — both Australia and New Zealand are full members.
This gives both countries a seat at the table when Pacific nations try to make decisions which shape their future.
This membership has always been very useful for Australia and New Zealand, even in decades past when far fewer nations were trying to get their way in the Pacific.
But in the present moment — with big outside players like China increasingly challenging Australia and seeking to assert their own power across the region — it's invaluable.
PIF is also more important than ever for Pacific nations dealing with a flood of outside interest and a host of deep-pocketed and sharp-elbowed new friends looking to press their interests across the vast blue ocean continent.
The Forum offers leaders an opportunity (if they can grasp it) to stick together, and try to set the terms for outside players, to ensure the Pacific — and not others — reap the most benefits.
Put simply: the strategic environment is much more contested, which means the stakes are now higher for everyone.
So why is there an argument over PIF?
Basically, this is an argument about whether Taiwan should be able to attend this year's meeting, which is being hosted by Solomon Islands in its capital Honiara.
The Pacific has historically been one of the main battlegrounds where Taiwan and the People's Republic of China have fought for diplomatic influence.
Just six years ago Taiwan still maintained six diplomatic "allies" in the Pacific, but that number has now dwindled to three, with Kiribati, Solomon Islands and Nauru all making the "switch" to recognise China instead.
Beijing is now trying to press home its advantage and doing everything it can to isolate Taiwan diplomatically in the region — and the Pacific Islands Forum itself has been drawn into the contest.
Every year PIF invites around two dozen dialogue and development partners to attend the leaders meeting, including the US, China and a host of other nations from across Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
Under a 1992 agreement (struck, ironically, in Honiara) there is a space carved out for Taiwan at PIF as well — a tacit recognition that those Pacific nations which do recognise Taipei should be able to meet with their diplomatic ally at the meeting.
But Beijing has always hated this arrangement and in the last few years, it has stepped up efforts to pressure the Forum and Pacific nations to scrap that arrangement: which would effectively ban Taiwan from attending the leaders meeting at all.
Solomon Islands as host — an opportunity for China
That brings us to this year's meeting, and this year's host.
If there was one Pacific island nation which might be pre-disposed (or pressured) to upset the status quo and block Taiwan, it would be Solomon Islands.
Solomon Islands might have only extended recognition to Beijing in 2019, but it has embraced the relationship with gusto since then.
China has poured hundreds of millions into several high-profile projects in Solomon Islands, and signed a deeply contentious security pact with the Pacific nation which set shock waves through Canberra and Washington DC.
Solomon Islands has also embraced Beijing's "One China" policy, cutting off all official contact with its former diplomatic ally and repeatedly declaring that it backs China's efforts to "reunify" Taiwan with the mainland.
Ever since last year's PIF leaders meeting — where a dispute over Taiwan once again stole the headlines — there has been incessant speculation about how Solomon Islands would respond to fresh Chinese pressure to block Taipei entirely.
That speculation only intensified after Solomon Islands refused entry to Taiwanese officials earlier this year, with one of Taiwan's Pacific allies, Palau, warning that blocking Taipei could trigger another PIF schism.
Some Pacific nations which recognise China rather than Taiwan were also frustrated: Samoa's caretaker prime minister made a similar threat, suggesting her country might boycott PIF in the future if Beijing upset the status quo.
Unsurprisingly, Australia and New Zealand were putting pressure on Solomon Islands too, privately urging Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele not to risk another PIF split by blocking Taiwan.
Faced with this blizzard of competing demands, the Prime Minister of Solomon Islands, Jeremiah Manele, landed on a slightly awkward compromise.
So what was the Manele compromise?
The prime minister's solution was fairly simple; he'd ask everyone to stay away.
Earlier this month Mr Manele announced that he'd ask all dialogue and development partners — including China, Taiwan, the US, the UK and a host of other nations — not to attend the leaders meeting at all.
The logic was clear. By blocking all PIF partners, the prime minister could respect China's red line — and keep Taiwanese officials off Solomon Islands' soil — without singling it out and risking furious blowback.
Obviously, Mr Manele can't admit to this publicly.
So the prime minister has put a procedural fig leaf over his decision, insisting it has nothing to do with China or Taiwan, and that he's simply "deferring" the partners dialogue because an entirely separate procedural review of the way PIF engages with diplomatic partners is not yet done.
That review — which was meant to establish a new system of "Tier 1" and "Tier 2" PIF partners — was originally meant to be in place for this year's meeting in Honiara, but has been (very predictably) delayed.
Mr Manele has declared that until that review is done, it makes sense for all outside players to simply stay away.
Does this explanation stack up?
No.
It has been obvious since at least December last year that the review Mr Manele is talking about was not going to be done in time for this year's meeting in Honiara.
If the prime minister's main focus was really on respecting that process, then it's safe to assume he'd have begun a conversation with other Pacific leaders months and months ago about the best way forward for this year's meeting.
Mr Manele has spoken about the importance of maintaining "consensus" and says he's simply trying to honour the wishes of Pacific leaders, who said last year the new system should be up and running ASAP.
But the prime minister didn't seek a full PIF consensus on this decision before announcing it publicly, and it's obvious many Pacific nations don't much like it: during a meeting of PIF Foreign Ministers yesterday, at least six countries (Australia, Fiji, PNG, New Zealand, Tuvalu and Republic of Marshall Islands) expressed concerns about what Solomon Islands has done.
Senior politicians from Fiji, Australia, PNG and New Zealand have all made it clear publicly they don't agree with Mr Manele's decision.
If Mr Manele is "honouring their wishes" and "respecting their decisions" he has gone about it in a very funny way.
Still, nobody wants to risk a full-blown conflict within PIF over this, which means the Solomon Islands' uneasy compromise looks set to hold.
Few Pacific officials might take Mr Manele's explanation at face value, but many likely understand why he's done what he has, and none (so far) want to risk Forum unity by trying to force him to overturn it.
What does this mean for the Pacific?
As the dust settles from this fracas it's worth looking at what it means for the Pacific, and all the nations within it.
Both Australia and New Zealand can live with this outcome: accepting Mr Manele's compromise will allow PIF to maintain its unity, which is the most important thing for both countries.
But they're also not delighted with it, because China has shown that it now has enough purchase in the Pacific to fundamentally shape (or at least influence) the running of its most critical annual meeting.
At least some Pacific nations share this unease.
After all the region has got enough big problems to worry about — and critical problems to discuss — without having to navigate yet another highly charged and increasingly fraught strategic contest not of its making.
And the reality is that as long as Taiwan maintains diplomatic allies in the Pacific — and as long as Beijing remains determined to do everything it can to strip them away — there will be another fault-line thrown across a region which desperately wants (and needs) to maintain unity of purpose.
It's not clear exactly what China makes of the final outcome.
China's pressure campaign on Taiwan might have backfired (after all, Beijing will now be unable to send a senior diplomat to PIF at Honiara, like all development partners) but it will still be able to get at least a foot in the door through its embassy in Solomon Islands.
Taiwan is probably the biggest loser; while its status as a development partner has been protected (and it should be back next year when its ally Palau hosts the meeting) it has lost one of its vanishingly rare opportunities to meet Pacific leaders, and to signal that it has a legitimate presence in this region.
Taipei must also know that its position in the Pacific is looking increasingly parlous as Beijing continues to press on its remaining three allies, with all the formidable resources at its disposal.
The silent arm-wrestle over Taiwan at the PIF 2025 leaders meeting might look like an obscure diplomatic footnote.
But it still tells us an awful lot about the enormous strategic pressures now starting to bear down on the nations of the blue Pacific, and how they might try to navigate them in years to come.
