Taiwan will not send a representative to Venezuela until the country demonstrates more goodwill, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday.
Diego Chou (周麟), the deputy head of the ministry’s Department of Central and South American Affairs, made the remarks at a press conference when asked when the ministry would name a new representative to head its economic and cultural office in Venezuela.
Since March, Caracas has refused to issue long-term visas to Taiwanese diplomatic personnel, he said. In August last year, it also denied visas to a group of Taiwanese baseball players seeking to participate in the 13th World Youth Championships.
Chou said the ministry was considering shutting down some underperforming representative offices in Latin America.
“MOFA is considering the possibility of shutting down some of its nine representative offices in Central and South America that have failed to fulfill their mandate,” he said.
“The planned move is aimed at cutting needless government spending, particularly for trade and economic offices in countries that are unfriendly to Taiwan,” he added, without mentioning any names.
The ministry maintains nine representative offices in Latin America, focusing on bilateral trade and economic co-operation between Taiwan and the host countries in the absence of formal diplomatic links, Chou said.
For instance, he said, the MOFA’s economic and cultural office in Mexico has been instrumental in establishing two-way trade and investment ties between Taiwan and Mexico, although there are few Taiwanese expatriates in that country.
Former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Monday called for greater cooperation between Taiwan, Lithuania and the EU to counter threats to information security, including attacks on undersea cables and other critical infrastructure. In a speech at Vilnius University in the Lithuanian capital, Tsai highlighted recent incidents in which vital undersea cables — essential for cross-border data transmission — were severed in the Taiwan Strait and the Baltic Sea over the past year. Taiwanese authorities suspect Chinese sabotage in the incidents near Taiwan’s waters, while EU leaders have said Russia is the likely culprit behind similar breaches in the Baltic. “Taiwan and our European
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