Paraguay is getting ready to host Taiwan President Lai Ching-te next month, President Santiago Pena said on Monday, indicating Lai is also likely to make sensitive transit halts in the United States — a move expected to anger Beijing.
Paraguay is one of only 12 countries to maintain formal diplomatic ties with Chinese-claimed Taiwan, and the only one in South America.
Visits by Taiwanese presidents to Central and South America always involve what are officially only stopovers in the United States given the distance from Taiwan, but are often the most important parts of the trip given Washington is the island’s top international backer and arms supplier.
Pena, speaking at a bilateral investment conference in the South American nation’s capital, said Lai would be coming next month.
‘Preparing Anxiously’
“We are preparing anxiously and with much affection to receive President Lai in 30 days,” Pena told the conference, which Lai’s Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung also attended.
Belize will also host Lai during a planned visit to the region, a government official told Reuters, without giving a date.
Defying China
Taiwan has a handful of other allies in Latin America and the Caribbean, but several have cut ties in recent years in favour of relations with economic powerhouse China, which considers Taiwan to be a Chinese province.
“This is to show the world that small countries have the capacity to become major global players,” Pena added.
Taiwan’s presidential office declined to comment, saying that, as in the past, if it had anything to announce it would do so “in due course”. It normally confirms such trips only shortly before they take place.
Lai has yet to go to the United States since US President Donald Trump took office for the second time earlier this year, though late last year Lai transited Hawaii and the US territory of Guam while visiting the Pacific.
The US State Department also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the possibility of a Lai transit next month.
China strongly objects to any interactions between Taiwan and the United States and routinely denounces US stopovers of Taiwanese presidents.
Taiwan’s government rejects China’s territorial claims and says it has a right to forge ties with other countries and engage with the world.
(With inputs from Reuters)
