Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) yesterday said a long existing “misunderstanding” with the nation’s diplomatic ally Panama had been resolved “without resorting to checkbook diplomacy.”
Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli accepted the credentials of Taiwanese Ambassador Diego Chou (周麟) on July 23, about six months after he was posted to the country, the longest waiting period for an ambassador to complete the accreditation process in the -country’s history, Yang said.
Yang told a news conference last night that the ministry managed to safeguard the dignity of the nation, maintain the relationship with Panama and convey the message that Taiwan has moved away from “dollar diplomacy.”
“People might suspect that it we agreed to provide more foreign aid [to Panama], but that absolutely did not happen,” Yang said.
Yang said he could not reveal details of what had been discussed between the two countries, though he also avoided a reporter’s question as to whether Panama had made any requests for new aid programs during the negotiations.
“Both sides discussed bilateral relations on all fronts, including aid programs. We explained to Panama the ‘flexibile diplomacy’ approach and the ‘three principles regarding foreign aid,’ which they understood,” he said.
Yang said Martinelli “has his views on bilateral cooperative relations,” but “we spared no effort to convey to him our ideas on the matter,” Yang said.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has defined his approach to engagement with the nation’s -diplomatic allies as more “flexible,” ensuring Taiwan and China do not undermine each other diplomatically and that foreign aid programs must be governed by three principles: “proper goals, legal processes and effective administration.”
Yang said Chou “would have not have had to wait for six months” to present his credentials to Martinelli “if we had offered more aid.”
In the future, Taiwan still plans to launch new cooperative programs with Panama, but the budget for any new projects would remain within the approved limits, Yang said.
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
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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