On Tuesday, Honduras President Xiamara Castro asked the country’s foreign minister to seek official ties with China and pressured Taiwan ahead of its President’s visit to the US and Central America.
During one of her electoral campaigns, Castro had vaguely given an idea about starting new relations with China and discontinuing its relationship with Taiwan because China does not prefer maintaining official relations with the countries that have relations with Taiwan.
Soon in January 2022, she hoped that the country continues to maintain peaceful relations with Taiwan as well. Central America will be remaining only with 13 official ties if it does not end its relations with Taiwan.
Tomas Zambrano, opposition Honduras told the local tv that the decisions would most probably affect the country’s relation with the US which is also one of its top trade partners and provide a lot of job opportunities to its people.
One of Taiwan’s largest sources of international support is the US, the US also provides arms to the country.
The Foreign Minister of Honduras, Eudardo Reina told a local TV channel that they would have to look at things very practically and search for the best benefit for the country’s people.
The statement made by Castro on Twitter is ahead of the Taiwan President’s visit to the US where she will be meeting Belize and Guatemala. More importantly, the thing that is going to anger China more is Tsai’s meeting with the US House speaker, McCarthy.
The Deputy head of Taiwan’s National Security said on Wednesday that he had an idea and did not rule out the possibility of they trying to put pressure on Tsai ahead of the trip to the US.
Recently, Beijing denied Taiwan’s accusations of China attracting its allies by offering them promises of giving them large amounts of loans.
Foreign diplomats of Taiwan recently showed their concern towards the Honduran government and asked them to make their decisions carefully and not fall into China’s luring trap.
According to sources, diplomats who are familiar with Taiwan’s situation think that the island needs to try every means possible to maintain good relations with Taiwan.
Earlier Zhang Run, the Chinese ambassador to Mexico tweeted that the One China policy which means China and Taiwan are part of one country is the international consensus.
China’s spokesperson, Wang Wenbin said in a recent brief with a media channel that it welcomes Hondura’s statement and that they are ready to establish diplomatic relations with the country that stand in line with its one-china principle.
Background of Honduras-Taiwan relations
Two years back, in December, Nicaragua broke its diplomatic relations with Taiwan in order to join ties with China. Through this action of theirs, they declared that Taiwan is a part of China and cannot be separated from it.
At that time, the United States encouraged several countries to maintain their diplomatic relations with China and not consider it a part of China, it also did not support the decisions made by Nicaragua and did not show the people’s will because the government there was not freely elected.
Taiwan is also on the verge of losing another diplomatic ally if the opposition wins the presidential elections in Paraguay. The opposition’s Presidential candidate Efrain Alegre is planning to cut ties with Taiwan and join relations with China, hoping to get a boost in soy and beef exports.
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