Taiwan scores a diplomatic coup

Despite stark opposition from Australia, Taipei's delegates at the recent Pacific Island Speakers Forum held in the Marshall Islands secured Taiwan's capacity as the organization's "development partner," sources said yesterday.

"With joint efforts by our ambassador to the Marshall Islands Lin Sung-huan (林松煥) and participating legislator Sun Kauo-hwa (孫國華), we were able to insert related wording in the meeting resolutions that termed Taiwan as the forum's `development partner,'" said Peter Cheng (鄭博久), director-general of the foreign ministry's department of East Asian and Pacific affairs.

KMT Legislator Sun Kauo-hwa, who attended the meeting from April 20 to April 24 on behalf of the Speaker of the Legislative Yuan Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), revealed the achievement during the meeting to reporters yesterday.

"The speaker of the Australian parliament [Neil Andrew] emphasized during the meeting that to invite Taiwan to become the development partner of the forum would violate Australia's `one China' policy," Sun recalled.

"But I challenged him by saying that inviting Taiwan as the forum's development partner had nothing to do with the `one China' policy," Sun said. "And I wondered what contribution China's participation in the forum could make anyway, given that it's still under one-party dictatorship."

The final resolutions, mapped out after long hours of closed-door discussions, stated that the forum's chairman "welcomed the attendance of the Parliament of the Republic of China [Taiwan] as development partners and thanked them for their assistance."

The resolutions also highlighted measures in dealing with the attendance of development partners for next year's forum slated to be held in Papua New Guinea.

The meeting secured participation by 11 speakers or deputy speakers of the parliaments from the Pacific Island states, among which five held diplomatic ties with Taipei, namely, the Marshall Islands, the Solomon Islands, Nauru, Tuvalu and Palau.

The original consensus reached between Taipei's embassy in the Marshall Islands and the forum was to term Taiwan as the forum's "development partner" in the meeting's resolutions, related foreign ministry records showed.

But such wording was found lacking in draft resolutions circulated among participating members prior to the meeting. The draft only expressed the participation of Taiwan's legislature and added the forum's recognition of "the assistance and continuing commitment" of Taiwan's legislature to support the forum.