The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday rebutted a foreign media report saying that Taiwan-ese government funds aided the Solomon Islands' prime minister in defeating a parliamentary no-confidence vote.
According to a report carried by the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday, "funds sourced from the Taiwanese government" had assisted Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare in surviving a parliamentary no-confidence vote on Wednesday.
Distorted politics
The report added that "opposition MPs [members of parliament] alleged during the parliamentary debate that Asian logging company money had also been distributed to distort the political process."
Another report carried by the same edition said that "there have been unconfirmed reports that Taiwanese funds could have been used to finance an ultimately aborted charter flight to help" fugitive Australian lawyer, Julian Moti, avoid extradition from neighboring Papua New Guinea.
Rebutting the report, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesman Michel Lu (呂慶龍) said it was unfair for some foreign media to run stories that damage the nation's reputation without verifying with the Taiwanese government and identifying its sources.
Prejudice?
"Perhaps they just lack understanding about Taiwan or are prejudiced against Taiwan," Lu said in a telephone interview with the Taipei Times.
"But Taiwan will still work on cooperating with our allies in the right direction," he said.
Taiwan has been interacting with its allies based on concrete bilateral cooperative plans and has never been involved in other countries' internal affairs, Lu said.
"When it comes to diplomatic cooperation, Taiwan will not fund any individual and will not seek to influence the internal affairs of our allies," he added.
"Taiwan pushes its diplomatic relations with other nations pragmatically and those accusations that hint Taiwan abused checkbook diplomacy is totally outdated and groundless," Lu said.
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