Papua New Guinea leader takes offense after Biden implies an uncle was eaten by cannibals

By ROD McGUIRK
Associated Press

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape has accused Joe Biden of disparaging the South Pacific island nation by implying that an uncle of the U.S. president had been eaten by “cannibals” there during World War II. Biden spoke at a Pennsylvania war memorial last week about his Army Air Corps aviator uncle Ambrose Finnegan, who was shot down over Papua New Guinea, which was a theater of heavy fighting. Biden said: “They never found the body because there used to be — there were a lot of cannibals for real in that part of New Guinea.” Marape said in a statement on Sunday that Biden’s remarks may have been a slip of the tongue but that his country “does not deserve to be labeled as such.”