Taiwan president visits Guatemala, St Lucia to save ties

Jan 13, 2008, 5:37 GMT

Taipei - Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian left on a visit to Guatemala and St Lucia on Sunday to save diplomatic ties and counter China's bid to win over Taiwan's allies.

Chen will attend the inauguration of Guatemala's President-elect Alvaro Colom on January 14, and then visit St Lucia, which resumed diplomatic ties with Taiwan last April.

He will also hold talks with the leaders of four allies - El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama and Honduras - when they are in Guatemala City to attend Colom's inauguration.

In his pre-departure speech at the Taiyuan International Airport, Chen blasted China for trying to isolate Taiwan and using dollar diplomacy to win over Taiwan's allies.

'Faced with the difficulty of the diplomatic situation, we cannot wait to die, but must go out and let the world see us and face the fact that we are a sovereign nation,' he said.

The danger of losing these allies to China is very real, and Taiwan's allies are not hiding their contacts with China.

On Friday, Guatemala's president-designate Colom said he sees Central America moving closer to China to benefit from its growing economic power, but he stopped short of saying Guatemala will follow the example of Costa Rica which dropped Taipei to recognize Beijing in June.

Malawi, Taiwan's African ally, sent two ministers to China on December 24 to sign an agreement to prepare for launching ties.

China reportedly has offered six billion dollars' aid to Malawi, but Malawi has not announced when it will cut ties with Taiwan to recognize China, prompting speculation that Malawi would maintain ties with Taiwan if Taipei can match China's offer of aid.