NIAMEY, NIGER — US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told AFP that Taiwan had a “lot to offer” the world after Honduras became the latest nation to snap ties with Taipei and recognise Beijing.
“I think it’s in the interest of people to be able to engage in the world. Taiwan has a lot to offer, including, for example, in international institutions, where remarkably talented people have tremendous experience and expertise,” Blinken said in an interview late Thursday in Niger.
“Countries have to decide for themselves whether and how they want to benefit from that.”
Blinken said that the United States has offered its “support to people of Taiwan” but that it also stood by its own “One-China “policy of recognising only Beijing.
“Countries have to make their own sovereign decisions about their foreign policies,” he said. “We leave that to them.”
The United States switched recognition in 1979 to Beijing but supplies weapons for the defence of Taiwan, a self-governing democracy claimed by Beijing which has not ruled out seizing it by force.
Taiwan officially calls itself the Republic of China, a legacy of the mainland’s nationalists who fled to the island after losing the civil war to the communists.
— AFP
