President Chen Shui-bian (
Chen had one-on-one meetings with Guatemalan President Oscar Berger, Haiti's acting President Boniface Alexandre, Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolanos, Salvadoran President Elias Antonio Saca and Panamanian President Martin Torrijos.
The heads of state all restated a resolve to support Taiwan in its bid to take part in major international organizations, including the WHO.
Taiwan and Guatemala signed a letter of intent last September on setting up an FTA. The agreement is expected to take effect this month after the Taiwanese government finishes screening tariff lists.
Chen invited Saca to Taiwan in October for a visit, during which he said they could sign a Taiwan-El Salvador FTA. He said that an agreement would be a shot in the arm for the development of a proposed vocational training center to be named the "Taiwan Park in El Salvador."
Taiwan has promised to channel some US$8 million to finance the development of the center.
Saca said El Salvador would not shift diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China simply because of pressure from Beijing.
Meanwhile, Chen reiterated that the NT$7.5 billion (US$250 million) "Jung Pang" project he initiated during a trip to Latin American last year remains in place and has received favorable responses from Taiwanese companies.
Separately, Chen also met Betty Williams, a Nobel Peace Prize winner from Ireland, in San Jose.
Williams invited Chen to visit Ireland, saying that she would do her utmost to help the president obtain a visa.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift