Taiwan\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) on Thursday affirmed that the country will continue to push for peace, prosperity and stability with Palau in the Indo-Pacific region, even though China has encouraged the Pacific ally to cut ties with Taipei, Central News Agency Taiwan reported.<\/p>\n
The Ministry said in a statement that Taiwan has long supported Palau in tourism development in a bid to strengthen the Pacific nation\u2019s \u201ceconomic resilience and sustainability.\u201d The Taiwan Foreign Ministry said that Taipei has been keen to help Ngerulmud improve its tourism industry in the post-COVID era, maintaining stable direct flight links between the two countries while working with like-minded countries to support the Pacific island nation\u2019s development.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the future, MOFA will continue to team up with Palau to facilitate peace, stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region,\u201d the statement read. This came after Cleo Paskal, a researcher at the US-based think tank \u2018Foundation for Defense of Democracies\u2019, posted a letter from Palau President Surangel Whipps Junior to a US senator on her X handle, Focus Taiwan reported.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe PRC has already offered to \u2018fill every hotel room\u2019 in our tourism-based private sector \u2014 \u2018and more if more are built\u2019 \u2014 and USD 20 million a year for two acres for a \u2018call centre,\u2019 the letter stated. Whipps urged the US Congress to support the Compacts of Free Association (COFA), a financial aid agreement with Palau, that also includes Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. A renewal of the 20-year COFA was signed late last year, but USD 7 billion to fund it is still struggling to find a path forward in the US Congress, Central News Agency Taiwan reported citing international media.<\/p>\n
Whipps further said that as long as the US Congress fails to renew the COFA aid package, it will \u201cplay into the hands of the CCP and the leaders here (some of whom have done \u2018business\u2019 with the PRC) who want to accept its seemingly attractive economic offers \u2014 at the cost of shifting alliances, beginning with sacrificing Taiwan.\u201d In response, the ministry said Whipps has repeatedly supported Taiwan\u2019s international organizations on many international occasions, including the UN General Assembly and the 28th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28) held last year.<\/p>\n
The Taiwan ministry also described Whipps as an \u201cadamant ally\u201d of Taiwan, as per CNA Taiwan. In addition, it said Whipps had a phone conversation with Taiwan\u2019s President-elect Lai Ching-te soon after the presidential election on January 13 and congratulated Taiwan for advancing \u2018democratic values\u2019, indicating the bilateral ties between the two countries are stable and continue to grow.<\/p>\n
Notably, Taiwan has long criticised China accusing it of \u201cpoaching\u201d its diplomatic allies Nauru severed ties with Taiwan two days after the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate was elected president. It was the 10th diplomatic ally Taipei lost to Beijing since President Tsai Ing-wen took office in May 2016 due to deteriorating cross-Taiwan Strait relations, Focus Taiwan reported.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taiwan\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) on Thursday affirmed that the country will continue to push for peace, prosperity and\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":31103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[7176,743,158,10075,8977,10073,10072,312,584,7180,8971,10076,8973,10074,165,689,10077],"class_list":["post-31100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-2024-taiwan-presidential-elections","tag-allies","tag-china","tag-compacts-of-free-association-cofa","tag-cross-taiwan-strait-relations","tag-deteriorating-relations","tag-diplomatic-pressure","tag-economy","tag-indo-pacific","tag-lai-ching-te","tag-marshall-islands","tag-micronesia","tag-palau","tag-peace-and-stability","tag-taiwan","tag-tourism","tag-united-nations-framework-convention-on-climate-change-cop28"],"reading_time":"3 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}