Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Michel Lu (呂慶龍) said yesterday that the nation's diplomatic ties with Costa Rica were stable and that they were not threatened by an upcoming meeting between Costa Rican President Oscar Arias and Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing (李肇星).
"Our relations with Costa Rica are stable. We are aware that China has managed to have its officials meet President Arias in its continuing efforts to woo allies away from Taiwan," Lu said.
"As far as we know, the president of Costa Rica might talk about the issue of economic and trade cooperation with Li during the meeting," Lu said.
"We will closely monitor the meeting and be alert to China's actions," Lu added.
Arias was to meet Li yesterday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Costa Rican Foreign Minister Bruno Stagno said in an interview from New York broadcast on a local radio station.
Arias and Li were expected to explore the possibility of establishing official relations, diplomatic sources said on Tuesday.
Stagno said he met with Li last week in Havana at the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement.
Lu said China had not only attempted to engage in a dialogue with the Costa Rican president at the UN General Assembly, but had also sought -- via Mexico's foreign minister -- talks between Chinese leaders and the leaders of all five of Taiwan's Central American diplomatic allies -- Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Lu said that as far as he knew, Nicaragua's representatives to the UN General Assembly had turned down requests for meetings with their Chinese counterparts.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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