President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday expressed the nation’s sincere gratitude to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves for visiting Taiwan amid heightened tensions across the Taiwan Strait.
Gonsalves and a delegation of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines officials were welcomed with a 21-gun salute outside the Presidential Office Building and the national anthems of both countries were played.
Tsai and Gonsalves then observed a parade of honor guards and military bands.
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
Tsai said she would like to extend the warmest welcome to the prime minister who is a “close and dear friend of Taiwan.”
Tsai said Gonsalves told reporters before his six-day-visit, which began on Sunday, that Chinese military drills would not prevent him from visiting his “friends in Taiwan.”
Tsai said she was deeply touched by Gonsalves’ visit, which is his 11th as prime minister and the first since he was re-elected for a fifth consecutive term in November 2020.
Photo: CNA
Gonsalves arrived amid military drills being conducted by China around Taiwan in response to a visit last week by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Taiwan and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines have supported each other since establishing ties in 1981 and achieved much, despite the constantly changing international landscape, Tsai said.
Gonsalves delivered a livestreamed speech in which he said Taiwan and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines are both island nations that share common values related to “the protection and promotion of democracy and human rights.”
Commenting on the Chinese drills, he said: “We do not like it, and do not support any powerful neighbor seeking to intimidate us or bully us.”
“Wherever there are differences, we must settle them peacefully in a civilized manner,” he added.
Gonsalves said his visit is meant to express Saint Vincent and the Grenadines’ solidarity with Taiwan, and is aimed at reinforcing bilateral relations and securing peace, security and prosperity for all.
He also expressed his country’s gratitude to Taiwan for offering assistance after a volcanic eruption last year and in combating the COVID-19 pandemic.
The two leaders also attended meetings to discuss issues of mutual interest, witnessed the signing of a bilateral judicial cooperation agreement and a letter of intent for collaboration in higher education, the Presidential Office said.
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is one of 14 UN members that diplomatically recognize Taiwan instead of the People’s Republic of China.
Separately, the Permanent Mission of the Republic of the Marshall Islands to the UN and other international organizations in Geneva, Switzerland, on Sunday posted Twitter messages in support of Taiwan.
“The Republic of the Marshall Islands is a true friend and ally” of Taiwan, the mission said, reiterating its promise to maintain the rules-based international order as well as peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.
“We condemn the recent military actions in the Taiwan Strait that threaten to disrupt peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and across the Indo-Pacific region,” it said.
It expressed the hope that the dispute can be resolved through constructive dialogue, adding that any communication should be transparent to prevent misunderstanding.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has