Taiwan’s ambassador to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) has met with the newly elected prime minister of the Caribbean ally state, Godwin Friday, to convey congratulations from President William Lai (賴清德), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
In a statement, the ministry said Ambassador Fiona Fan (范惠君) delivered Lai’s message during their meeting, and that the prime minister asked her to relay his thanks in return.
The ministry released the statement in response to a media query about the outlook for Taiwan-SVG relations.
Photo: Yang Cheng-yu, Taipei Times
Friday’s New Democratic Party (NDP) has previously proposed switching recognition from Taiwan to Beijing, although the new prime minister did not publicly address the issue during the campaign.
He was sworn in after the NDP won 14 of the 15 parliamentary seats in the general election on Friday last week, ending former SVG prime minister Ralph Gonsalves’ 24-year rule.
At his swearing-in ceremony, Friday called the result a clear mandate for “major, transformational changes” and pledged to work with “every sinew in our body” to deliver on campaign promises, according to Dominica News Online.
Taiwan established diplomatic relations with SVG in 1981.
Separately, the Executive Yuan has approved diplomatic personnel changes, appointing Hsu Wei-ming (徐蔚民), a former deputy representative to Thailand, as the country’s new ambassador to the Marshall Islands.
Hsu, a counselor at the Department of International Organizations, is replacing Steve Hsia (夏季昌), who has served as ambassador since September 2022 and is rotating back to Taipei to work at the ministry, according to the Executive Yuan. Hsu’s former overseas posts include Latvia.
The Marshall Islands is one of 12 countries that maintain diplomatic relations with Taipei instead of Beijing.
Former representative to Malaysia Phoebe Yeh (葉非比) has been appointed as the new representative to Sweden.
Lien Yu-ping (連玉蘋), head of the Department of International Cooperation and Economic Affairs, is to take over as representative to Malaysia, according to the Cabinet.
The move follows former Swedish representative Gu Ruey-sheng’s (谷瑞生) transfer to Germany.
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Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
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