<
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/30/pacific-islands-forum-communique-taken-down-after-chinese-envoy-calls-taiwan-reference-unacceptable>
"A summit of Pacific leaders has ended in drama after China’s regional envoy
demanded the scrapping of language about Taiwan, with the communique later
republished without the offending paragraph.
The Pacific Islands Forum (Pif) summit in Tonga this week brought together
Australia, New Zealand and 16 Pacific island countries or territories, only
three of which still have diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
China is not a member of the regional grouping, but – like the US and numerous
other major countries – attends some of the Pif events as a “dialogue partner”.
For more than 30 years, Taiwan has been afforded the lesser status of
“development partner”, a situation that irks Beijing, which claims the
self-governed democracy as its territory.
Solomon Islands, which has fostered increasingly warm ties with Beijing since
switching diplomatic recognition from Taiwan in 2019, had raised concerns in
the lead-up to this week’s summit about Taiwan’s status.
But the final communique published on the Pif website on Friday rebuffed any
push for change and stood by existing arrangements.
“Leaders reaffirmed the 1992 Leaders decision on relations with Taiwan/Republic
of China,” it said.
China’s special envoy for the Pacific, Qian Bo, called for changes to the
communique.
Nikkei Asia reported that it saw a “visibly angry” Qian confront the Pif
secretary general, Baron Waqa, immediately after the closing news conference
and that he called the statement “unacceptable”."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
