President William Lai (賴清德) currently has no plans to travel overseas, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Hsiao Kuang-wei (蕭光偉) said yesterday, denying media reports that a planned trip to Paraguay via New York was blocked by the US.
At a routine news conference, Hsiao denied a Financial Times report that said Lai’s planned visits to diplomatic allies Paraguay, Guatemala and Belize had been delayed or canceled due to US President Donald Trump blocking a stopover in New York following protests from China.
The Financial Times, which cited three anonymous sources for its story, said that Trump was concerned that Lai’s trip would affect ongoing trade talks between the US and China.
Photo: Chen Yi-kuan, Taipei Times
Hsiao said that Lai did not have any overseas travel arrangements because of ongoing recovery efforts in southern Taiwan following Typhoon Danas and international developments such as tariff negotiations with the US.
Any finalized overseas itinerary would be announced by the Presidential Office in line with usual procedures, he said.
Hsiao’s statement was nearly identical to that made on Monday night by Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧), as the government responded to questions about a trip that had reportedly been planned, but not yet formally announced.
An Agence France-Presse report on July 14 cited Paraguayan President Santiago Pena as saying at an investment forum that Lai would visit his country “in 30 days.”
At the time Pena made the comment, he was hosting a delegation comprising about 30 business leaders and Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) in Asuncion.
Bloomberg News reported two days later that Lai was planning to stop in New York on Monday next week and then Dallas 10 days later as part of a trip to diplomatic allies Paraguay, Guatemala and Belize.
However, a Bloomberg report on Monday said that plans for the trip were thrown into flux late last week when Taiwan could not get the US to give the green light.
Like the Financial Times, the Bloomberg report also cited the Trump administration’s concern that Lai’s stopovers in the US could derail trade talks with China.
The American Institute in Taiwan, responding to an inquiry about the matter, said that it could not comment on hypothetical questions, as Taiwan had not announced the president’s visit.
Meanwhile, the US Department of State yesterday said that its policies for stopovers by Taiwanese leaders have not changed.
“The United States remains committed to our longstanding ‘one China’ policy, which is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the Three Joint Communiques and the ‘six assurances,’” a state department spokesperson told the Central News Agency on condition of anonymity.
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