The French National Assembly’s Taiwan Friendship Group on Friday issued a statement rejecting claims made in a report on Europe-China relations by French Legislator Sophia Chikirou of the La France Insoumise (LFI) party as replicating Beijing’s lies and distorting a UN resolution.
French newspaper Le Monde last month reported that since the French National Assembly’s European Affairs Committee on June 17 authorized the publication of Chikirou’s report, which the group said takes pro-Beijing positions, it has caused a stir in French political circles.
The 153-page report was published after brief debate by only eight members of the committee, including four from the LFI. As the report’s content is markedly at odds with the views of the French government, it also sparked a backlash from politicians and academics.
Photo: Screen grab from the Presidential Office’s Web site
The statement by the French National Assembly’s Taiwan Friendship Group, led by lawmaker Marie-Noelle Battistel, issued a clarification on the report’s most controversial claim of Taiwan’s status.
As the report echoed Beijing’s claims in saying that “the United Nations has recognized Taiwan as a province of China,” the friendship group’s statement said that they express regret over the report’s many misinterpretations, such as Beijing’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758.
The statement said that UN Resolution 2758 only recognized the People’s Republic of China as the “sole legitimate representative of China to the United Nations,” but it did not determine the issue of Taiwan’s legal status, nor did it preclude the possibility of Taiwan having its own representation in other international organizations.
The group said that according to the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Taiwan Strait is considered international waters, and maintaining stability and freedom of navigation through the Strait is a strategic priority of the international community.
The statement urged the French government to continue conducting naval transits through the Taiwan Strait, like its allies the US and the UK, to exercise the right of innocent passage and maintain the “status quo.”
China continues to escalate its military exercises, frequently intrudes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone and conducts large-scale drills surrounding Taiwan in attempts to threaten the “status quo,” the statement added.
Beijing is planning to bolster its strategy and impose more military and psychological pressure on Taiwan and its people, it said.
The group rejected the report’s recommendation to abandon the European Indo-Pacific strategy and pursue a regional strategy that includes China, saying it disregards international law and French national interests in the Indo-Pacific, especially in the South Pacific region, where many French citizens reside.
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