President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) held talks with his Panamanian counterpart Martin Torrijos on Wednesday in Panama City during a refueling stop en route to Paraguay.
“In the past, the heads of the two countries seldom had a chance to talk like this. There is a warming in relations between Taiwan and Panama,” Minister of Foreign Affairs Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊), who was also present at the meeting, told the press.
Panama, one of the most economically and militarily strategically significant countries in the world because of the Panama Canal, has been at the center of speculation about countries that might switch recognition from Taiwan to China.
PHOTO: CNA
Next year will mark the centenary of diplomatic relations between the two nations that established ties in 1909, but relations cooled visibly after Torrijos assumed office in May 2004.
It was reported that Torrijos had been actively seeking to establish official ties with China.
Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) made a trip to Panama in August 2004 for Torrijos’ inauguration, but his subsequent requests for a stopover en route to Latin America in 2005 and last year were both rejected by Torrijos.
Taiwan had also failed to obtain a positive response from Panama in 2004 when seeking to participate in the Panama Canal Expansion project — one of Torrijos’s campaign promises.
Torrijos last year invited Beijing to aid in the expansion of the Panama Canal.
“It’s true that Panama sought Chinese businesses to invest in the project, but Torrijos told Ma that he welcomed and would invite Taiwanese businesses to take part in the expansion plan,” Presidential Office spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) said.
Ma told Torrijos that he was impressed with the plan when visiting the Panama Canal Zone five years ago as Taipei mayor and that he hoped the canal expansion project could be opened to Taiwanese businesses, Wang said.
Wang described the atmosphere of the meeting, conducted in English, as “harmonious,” saying that Ma and Torrijos sat on a sofa for a private chat after the formal meeting.
During the one-hour meeting, Ma spent most of his time elaborating on his “diplomatic truce” idea to Torrijos and they also exchanged opinions about energy conservation.
Panama, like Taiwan, imports nearly 100 percent of its energy.
Based on the government’s communications with Torrijos over Ma’s trip, Ou said that relations between Taiwan and Panama remain “stable.”
Ou said that Taiwan had asked for a transit in Panama, and then Torrijos offered to hold talks.
Also present at the meeting were National Security Council Secretary-General Su Chi (蘇起), Taiwan’s Representative to Panama Hou Ping-fu (侯平福), Chairman of the Economic Planning and Development Council Chen Tian-jy (陳添枝) and John Feng (馮寄台), a diplomatic consultant to Ma.
The five representatives accompanying Torrijos were his first vice president Samuel Lewis Navarro, who doubles as foreign minister, Minister of Commerce and Industry Carmen Gisela Vergara, the minister of the interior, a consultant to Torrijos and a legal consultant to Panama’s ministry of foreign affairs.
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:
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
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater