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Relations with South Pacific are
endangered
By Lai I-chung ¿à©É©¾
Saturday, Mar 27, 2010, Page 8
Among Taiwan¡¦s 23 diplomatic allies, six are located in the South Pacific, and
four of those six are concentrated in the northern Micronesian region.
It would be no exaggeration to call this a major diplomatic base for Taiwan.
In the past, Taiwan has always paid great attention to its diplomatic allies in
this region, even setting up a multilateral Taiwan-South Pacific summit process
in 2006, thus upgrading the approach of bilateral contacts with individual
countries. This process implied a more systematic and transparent approach to
Taiwan¡¦s relations with its South Pacific allies.
Why the development from bilateral to multilateral relations?
Because a multilateral summit involves not only talks between heads of state,
but also promotes cooperation in agricultural, health, educational, cultural and
other sectors.
The result is that the multilateral summit frequently leads to smaller
multilateral meetings between government ministries and agencies, and this will
further deepen cooperation and relations with the region. These multilateral
summits also have a tendency to expand and generate further contacts, none of
which can be achieved by bilateral contacts.
Throughout President Ma Ying-jeou¡¦s (°¨^¤E) current visit to the region, he has
been holding individual meetings, rather than organizing a multilateral summit.
The visit was necessitated by Ma twice canceling the Taiwan-South Pacific
Summit. Ma should have simply held the postponed summit, instead of holding a
series of bilateral meetings.
There are only two possible explanations for this approach: Either the South
Pacific nations have lost interest in Taiwan and do not want a summit with Ma,
which has forced him to hold bilateral meetings, or Ma is not interested in
maintaining diplomatic relations with the South Pacific region or holding a
multilateral summit, and is only making token visits to the region to
demonstrate that he is still aware of their existence.
Regardless of which of these explanations is correct, it is obvious that while
the number of diplomatic allies remains unchanged, Taiwan¡¦s relations with the
South Pacific region are in great danger of being downgraded.
Lai I-chung is an executive member of Taiwan Thinktank.
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