The US Trump administration has called for the United Nations' decolonisation special committee's mandate to be scrapped, saying it has "outlived its original purpose".
The verbal attack, which came shortly before the recent US midterm elections, included describing regional visits to the Pacific as little more than "yearly junkets".
US deputy representative to the UN general assembly, Tammy Bruce, ramped up its regular opposition to the practice of decolonisation, arguing such work was no longer necessary.
"The UN's fourth special committee has outlived its original purpose, with more than 80 former colonies having since joined the UN as member states," Ms Bruce said.
She criticised consideration to the committee's annual decolonisation resolutions, adding that the point had "wasted UN time and resources".
"Revisiting the same texts every year wastes the UN's time and resources, as do the special committee's yearly junkets to resorts in the Caribbean and South Pacific," she said.
Six of the world's 17 territories remaining on the UN list of non-self-governing territories lie in the Pacific: American Samoa, French Polynesia, Guam, New Caledonia, Tokelau, and the Pitcairn Islands.
The Pacific Conference of Churches rejected the Trump administration's call to wind up the special committee's mandate, arguing that decolonisation remains unfinished while six Pacific territories remain on the UN's list.
Pacific Conference of Churches general secretary Reverend James Shri Bhagwan argued the committee's work with its regional seminars and visiting missions gave Indigenous communities an opportunity to express their views directly to the UN.
"Our people are not props, and our homes are not junkets," he said.
The US government administers American Samoa, Guam and the US Virgin Islands as former colonial possessions.
It also administers the Northern Mariana Islands and Puerto Rico, but both territories entered into a negotiated political union with the US.
The US challenged the legal standing of key texts underpinning the international decolonisation process.
"These and earlier resolutions including resolution 1514, are non-binding and do not necessarily reflect international law," Ms Bruce said.
The UN's general assembly resolution 1514 was first adopted in 1960, calling for an explicit end to colonialism.
Washington argued that political independence should not be a sole outcome of decolonisation, saying people in non-self-governing territories should be able to choose between independence, free association, integration with an administering state, or a political status freely determined by the people concerned.
"The special committee should not just presume to speak for these peoples or intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign state and its relations with non-self-governing territories," she said.
Ms Bruce also reaffirmed Washington's disagreement with criticism of a US federal court ruling in 2017 under the Trump administration, which blocked Guam's proposed self-determination plebiscite.
She reiterated an ongoing US position that it had a sovereign right to conduct military activities in accordance with its own national security interests and international law.
Ms Bruce accused the UN's special committee of becoming a platform for "ideological posturing" rather than focusing on the people it represents.
"It should go without saying that the people of the remaining territories deserve better than to be considered as props in other governments' political campaigns," she said.
