Relations between Taiwan and Panama remain strong, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday in response to a Panamanian news report claiming Beijing had rejected Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli's offer to switch diplomatic allegiance.
The report said Costa Rican President Oscar Arias had revealed in a recent meeting with former Colombian foreign minister Maria Emma Mejia that Martinelli had approached China with the intention of breaking ties with Taiwan.
Martinelli reportedly told Arias, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who led his country in terminating its 60-year friendship with Taipei in 2007, that Panama wanted to follow San Jose's example.
The Chinese rejected his offer, however, saying it was not interested in expanding its diplomatic relations in the region at the moment and told Martinelli to “stay calm,” the report said.
It said Martinelli made the move despite the fact that Taiwan had already agreed to donate US$22 million to procure a presidential jet for Panama.
Panamanian Vice President and Foreign Minister Juan Carlos Varela was quoted in a separate report as saying that “Panama is a sovereign country that does not need to seek permission to make its own decisions.”
Without rejecting Arias' claim as quoted in the report, Varela said his government was interested in forging closer commercial ties with China, especially in the Colon Free Zone.
“We have always been willing to maintain these relationships with Mainland China, but now there is a diplomatic truce which we respect and support,” Varela said.
Ministry spokesman Henry Chen (陳銘政) said the relationship between Taiwan and Panama was in tip-top shape, but acknowledged that several of the nation's 23 allies had considered jumping ship at the beginning of President Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) administration.
“But so far we have maintained all our allies and our relationships with them remain strong,” he said.
Martinelli, a business tycoon turn politician, has publicly advocated a stronger Panama-China alliance during his campaign.
The nation's other Latin American allies, such as Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo and Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes, have also made similar calls.
Panamanian Ambassador to Taiwan Mario Luis Cucalon D'anello said that when he read the news, he called his government to “find out the truth,” but could not get in touch with the appropriate channels in the foreign ministry because of the time difference.
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