Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) this week met diplomatic allies on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, according to pictures posted by the Palauan government and a source with knowledge of the matter.
Lin’s visit came after he published an op-ed on the Web site of conservative US outlet Newsmax, calling on the world body to recognize Taiwan.
It was the first time a Taiwanese foreign minister was known to have been in New York during the UNGA week, for which world leaders gather in the city each year.
Photo: AP
Lin attended a reception in New York on Monday hosted by American Global Strategies, a consultancy set up by former US national security adviser Robert O’Brien and former US National Security Council chief of staff Alexander Gray, a source familiar with the event said.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment.
The office of the presidency of Palau, one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies, published photographs on Facebook of Lin at the reception with Palauan President Surangel Whipps Jr and Gray.
Gray served with O’Brien in the White House in the first administration of US President Donald Trump.
In the background of one of the photos showing Lin with Whipps and Gray is a US Department of State official whom the source identified as Charles Harder, a special envoy for initiatives affecting children’s well-being.
The reception was held at Le Bernadin, a high-end French restaurant in Manhattan, the source said.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the US for “allowing” the visit, which it said “provided a stage for Taiwan independence separatist forces to stage their provocations and seek secession.”
The US Department of State did not offer a comment when asked about Lin’s New York visit.
Lin is set to visit Poland next week, where he is to speak at the two-day Warsaw Security Forum on Monday and Tuesday.
He is to deliver a talk titled “Reinvention of Global Democratic Supply Chain.”
Taiwanese diplomatic allies on Wednesday expressed support for Taiwan at the UN, with Paraguay urging the international body to give Taiwan a seat at the assembly and the Marshall Islands denouncing the misrepresentation of UN Resolution 2758.
Taiwan deserves a place in the forum, as it is a matter of justice, Paraguayan President Santiago Pena said.
Paraguay has proudly maintained relations with Taiwan for 67 years, highlighting that “cooperation between nations can be based on more than mere interest,” he said.
“Certainly, this decision costs us dearly economically, but believe me, the value of doing what is right is priceless,” Pena said.
Growing tension in the Taiwan Strait was deeply concerning, and China’s military exercises, aerial incursions and bellicose rhetoric “points toward a dangerous escalation that could destabilize not only Asia, but also the entire global order,” he said.
Czech President Petr Pavel said that the disruption of the cross-strait “status quo” or elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific region threatened to destabilize global stability and trade.
“Security in one part of the world is directly linked to security everywhere,” he added.
Marshallese President Hilda Heine said that despite Taiwan’s actions to uphold the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, it has repeatedly been excluded from essential international engagements.
“UNGA Resolution 2758 has been repeatedly and falsely portrayed as a consensus on the ‘one China’ UN law,” Heine said, adding that the resolution “does address who sits behind a nameplate at the UN, it does not confer or justify any basis for coercion or seizing sovereign control of an independent democratic nation.”
“All member states should understand that these and other politically influenced practices where Resolution 2758 is misrepresented will never be justification under international law for military invasion or coercive acts against Taiwan,” Heine said.
The foreign ministers of South Korea, Japan and the US on Monday met on the sidelines of the general assembly and expressed concern in a joint statement about increasingly frequent destabilizing activities around Taiwan.
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