Taiwan and St. Lucia formally resumed diplomatic relations as representatives from both countries signed a joint communique in the Caribbean country on Monday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced yesterday.
St. Lucia is Taiwan's 25th diplomatic ally.
Minister of Foreign Affairs James Huang (黃志芳) flew to St. Lucia on Sunday and signed the Joint Communique on the Reestablishment of Diplomatic Relations with St. Lucia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Rufus Bousquet on Monday, said Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Yang Tzu-pao (楊子葆) at a news press conference in Taipei.
Both sides officially announced the resumption of diplomatic ties in the signing ceremony in Castries, the capital of St. Lucia. Taiwan established its embassy on the island on the same day in accordance with the joint communique, Yang said.
The establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries has been dogged by with controversy, not only from China but also within Taiwan.
Taiwan and St. Lucia first set up diplomatic relations in 1984 when John Compton served as prime minister. However, St. Lucia severed ties with Taipei in 1997 when then prime minister Kenny Anthony switched recognition to Beijing. Compton came back to power last December.
On April 25, Bousquet announced in Congress that St. Lucia intended to set up ties with Taiwan.
In Taipei, Premier Su Tseng-chang (
The restoration of diplomatic ties between St. Lucia and Taiwan has the full support of Compton and his Cabinet, Yang said.
Huang, who is in St. Lucia, called in during a news conference, saying that it was a remarkable achievement for Taiwan to be able to win a new friend despite the tremendous pressure from China.
"It shows that the image of `Taiwan' is highly valued in internationally," Huang said.
Huang said his joy was tempered by the fact that despite having made a new ally, Taiwan still faces a tough diplomatic future because of China's expanding global influence.
Huang said Taiwan had never asked St. Lucia to severe diplomatic relations with China during the negotiations for the resumption of ties.
"Taiwan has no intention of playing a `zero-sum game' with China. We hope St. Lucia, Taiwan and China can all be winners in the diplomatic arena," he said.
Asked whether Taiwan would offer St. Lucia economic aid, Huang said that Taiwan would offer the same cooperation pact it has with other diplomatic allies, including agricultural development, information technology, handicrafts, medicine and education.
"Taiwan can never compete with China when it comes to `checkbook diplomacy.' As far as I know, what China offered St. Lucia would stun anyone. Taiwan would never do that," Huang said. "Taiwan wins friendship with its sincerity and reputation."
A senior foreign ministry official, who requested anonymity, said that Gary Lin (
Lin, a senior diplomat who worked for the ministry for more than 20 years, has served as the director-general of the Department of East Asia and Pacific Affairs, ambassador to the Marshall Islands and charge d'affaires to St. Lucia.
Lin was commissioned to St. Lucia soon after Compton won the election last December and took charge of the task of restoring diplomatic ties with St. Lucia.
While Lin was serving as the director-general of the Department of East Asia and Pacific affairs, Taiwan built diplomatic relations with Kiribati and Nuaru. He was also credited with facilitating President Chen Shui-bian's (
China, meanwhile, expressed "indignation and opposition" to the resumption of Taiwan-St. Lucia ties yesterday.
"The resumption of diplomatic relations between St Lucia and Taiwan is a flagrant violation of the declaration on the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and St Lucia," China's foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao (
Additional reporting by AFP
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not