St Vincent and the Grenadines will have the ability to advocate more strongly for Taiwan to be recognized when it takes its seat on the UN Security Council early next year, St Vincent and the Grenadines Ambassador to Taiwan Andrea Bowman said last week in an interview with the Central News Agency.
The Caribbean nation was elected in June to be a seat on the 15-member council for a two-year term and is to take its seat in January.
The council seat will put St Vincent and the Grenadines “in a position where our voice will be better heard,” and allow the country to advocate for “Taiwan’s right to be legitimately recognized,” she said.
Photo: CNA
“The voice of this little country in such a big seat … would be heard and would count for something,” Bowman said.
Her nation has been using its voice to speak up internationally for Taiwan and will continue to do so, she said.
“Only now it’s going to be a louder voice, a voice that carries even more weight,” said Bowman, who became St Vincent and the Grenadines’ first ambassador to Taipei in August.
On the issue of China’s efforts to take Taiwan’s diplomatic allies, Bowman said she recognized that “all allies of Taiwan would be targeted by China.”
However, her nation’s 38-year relationship with Taiwan was built on “trust and friendship,” she said.
Diplomatic ties with Taiwan are strongly supported by the public and by Vincentian Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves and his Unity Labour Party, now in their fourth consecutive term, she said.
The decision to open an embassy was a strong indication of its commitment to bilateral diplomatic ties, Bowman said.
The embassy was formally opened in an Aug. 8 ceremony, but did not began service until Monday last week.
Bowman, a former high school principal, said her first priority as ambassador is to take care of Vincentian students in Taiwan and to decide how best the embassy can serve them.
“I want them to regard the St Vincent embassy as a home away from home,” Bowman said.
Her second priority is to establish a viable presence in Taiwan, promoting her nation through the media, exhibitions and cultural events, she said.
The embassy’s first major undertaking will be a series of activities in the week leading up to Oct. 27, the 40th anniversary of St Vincent and Grenadines independence, Bowman said.
The celebrations will include a reception at the embassy and public events in Taipei, all of which will help establish the nation’s presence in Taiwan, she said.
“We are in our early days, but bit by bit we will do more and more,” she said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS