Pacific island leaders have agreed to back a sweeping regional policing plan after Australia overcame last-minute concerns that the proposal was part of a geopolitical play to exclude China.

The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, discussed the issue with his counterparts at the Pacific Islands Forum (Pif) in Tonga on Wednesday amid increasing contest for influence between the US and China.

He later welcomed the agreement from Pif leaders to support the Pacific Policing Initiative, which will see up to four police training centres of excellence established in the Pacific.

The proposal also includes the formation of multi-country police units. Albanese said this would provide “a ready pool of trained Pacific police to deploy in response to Pacific country requirements, such as for major event management or additional capacity in times of crisis”.

The Australian government will also set up a police development and coordination hub in Brisbane, giving Pacific police officers access to Australian federal police facilities for training and to prepare for deployments.

Australia has offered about $400m in funding over five years to help deliver the scheme, including infrastructure costs to build policing centres of excellence in the region.

Albanese said it was “a Pacific-led initiative” that reflected the desire of Pacific neighbours to “stand with each other and help each other in times of need”.

Without directly mentioning China, Albanese said it was a case of the Pacific working together to make the security of the entire region “much stronger”. It would allow the Pacific to look after its own security “ourselves”.

But hours before the deal was announced, the prime minister of Vanuatu, Charlot Salwai, and the regional sub-grouping to which Vanuatu belongs went public with its concerns the plan may be intended to serve western strategic interests.

Salwai described the Pacific policing initiative as “important” but indicated the region should ensure the plan was “framed to fit our purposes and not developed to suit the geostrategic interests and geostrategic denial security postures of our big partners”.

This “denial” language is a clear reference to excluding China. Australia has repeatedly registered its concerns about China’s attempts to reach security and policing agreements with Pacific island countries, including the 2022 deal with Solomon Islands.

Salwai is the chair of the Melanesian spearhead group (MSG), a regional subgrouping that includes Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Fiji.

He raised the concerns in an opening statement to an MSG caucus meeting in Tonga. His language was then echoed by the MSG director general, Leonard Louma.

Louma said the Pacific policing initiative was “worthy” but cautioned that it “must be genuinely framed to fit our purposes and not conveniently developed as part of the geostrategic denial security doctrine of our big partners”.

While he described conversations held so far as “encouraging”, he added that many aspects were still “cryptic”.

The minister for the Pacific, Pat Conroy, who is also attending the talks, said earlier that Australia was “here to listen and act on the priorities of the Pacific”.

Pacific countries had previously expressed a view that any gaps in security in the region should be filled from within the Pacific, he said.

Asked directly whether Australia had “steamrolled” some Pacific states in its push for the policing initiative, Conroy said: “I can say to you that no minister or leader of a Pacific government has said that to me.”

Conroy said he “would reject any accusation, any claim that this is something that Australia is driving”.

“This is something that’s been developed by the Pacific, this is Pacific-led, and that’s incredibly strong.”

Conroy said the proposal was aligned with Fiji’s “oceans of peace” concept and also “builds on the very generous offer from the Papua New Guinea government at the Pif last year to be a regional training hub for Pacific police forces”.

Pif is a regional grouping that brings together Australia, New Zealand and 16 other countries and territories in the Pacific.

China and the US are not members but are “dialogue partners” and routinely send high-powered delegations to attend a portion of the summit meetings.