Vohor Isolated As Vanuatu Ministers Assert One China Policy

by Mary Swire, Tax-News.com, Hong Kong

15 November 2004

A spokesman for Vanuatu’s Prime Minister Serge Vohor, insisted last week that the newly-established diplomatic links with Taiwan remain in place despite a unanimous vote by the country’s Council of Minister’s to veto the action.

It means that Vohor now finds himself politically isolated after taking the unilateral decision earlier in the month to open a diplomatic dialogue with Taipei in defiance of Vanuatu’s long-established ‘one China’ policy.

Nevertheless, Vohor, who was hoping that friendly relations with Taiwan would materialise into a new source of foreign aid, remained defiant despite facing overwhelming political opposition. His spokesman, Kalvao Moli, told Reuters that “as far as the prime minister is concerned, the ties are still in place."

However, Vanuatu’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Barak Sope, who along with the rest of the government was not informed of Vohor’s recent trip to Taiwan, saw the issue rather differently.

“The Council of Ministers agreed to instantaneously revoke the so-called diplomatic relations ambiguously established through a communiqué signed on November 3rd in Taipei,” Sope confirmed in a statement.

He added that that action leaves Vohor with two choices – “to agree or to sack us all.”

Since the ending of the civil war in 1949, Beijing’s insistence that Taiwan remains a part of greater China and therefore has no right to establish foreign relations, has left the island very isolated diplomatically. Whilst many countries have established informal relations with Taiwan, few have established full diplomatic ties for fear of incurring the wrath of China.

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