Papua New Guinea leader defends nation after Biden's 'cannibals' comment

The prime minister of Papua New Guinea defended the Pacific Island nation after President Joe Biden appeared to imply that his uncle’s body was eaten by “cannibals” there during World War II, urging the United States to clean up the remnants of the conflict in the region.

“President Biden’s remarks may have been a slip of the tongue; however, my country does not deserve to be labeled as such,” Prime Minister James Marape said in a statement Sunday, referring to Biden’s comment about cannibals.

Speaking at an event in Pennsylvania last week, Biden said that his uncle, Army Air Corps aviator Ambrose J. Finnegan, had been “shot down in New Guinea.”

“They never found the body because there used to be — there were a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea,” he said.

U.S. military records about Finnegan’s death make no mention of the aircraft being downed or of cannibalism, saying the plane was forced to ditch in the ocean off the north coast of New Guinea for unknown reasons and that the three men killed in the crash were never found.

A White House official told NBC News on Monday that the U.S. is steadfast in its commitment to finding and repatriating the remains of fallen U.S. service members from World War II, and that Papua New Guinea’s support with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, which works to account for missing personnel, has contributed to identifying and returning hundreds of service members home.

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates told NBC Newsin a statement last week that Biden was “proud of his uncle’s service in uniform who lost his life when the military aircraft he was on crashed in the Pacific after taking off near New Guinea.”

The Asia-Pacific was a theater of heavy fighting during