UN ambassador Kelly Craft was due to arrive in Taiwan on January 13
Credit: Reuters
A visit by Kelly Craft, the US ambassador to the United Nations, to Taiwan this week was abruptly cancelled on Tuesday by Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, just days after he had unexpectedly announced it.
The 11th hour decision was reportedly part of a sweeping move to halt all overseas travel for senior US diplomats after last week’s storming of the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
Ms Craft had been due to arrive in Taipei, the Taiwanese capital, on Wednesday for a three-day trip and was scheduled to meet Tsai Ing-wen, the president, who earlier this week tweeted that the unprecedented visit “marks an important milestone in the US-Taiwan partnership.”
Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday it “understood and respected” the last-minute decision to cancel.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs regrets that the US Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft cannot lead a delegation to visit Taiwan from Jan. 13 to 15 as scheduled, but welcomes Ambassador Craft to visit at an appropriate time in the future,” it said in a statement.
Morgan Ortagus, the US state department spokeswoman, on Tuesday cited the transition to the administration of President-elect Joe Biden and the need to complete planning as the reason for curbs to overseas travel, including Mr Pompeo’s own schedule to go to Europe.
President Tsai Ing-wen was due to meet Ambassador Craft on Thursday
Credit: Chiang Ying-ying/AP
“We are expecting shortly a plan from the incoming administration identifying the career officials who will remain in positions of responsibility on an acting basis until the Senate confirmation process is complete for incoming officials,” Ms Ortagus said.
The timing of Ms Craft’s visit, and the nature of its announcement – which was initially linked to Mr Pompeo’s criticisms of the mass arrests of Hong Kong pro-democracy figures last week – had already raised concerns that the outgoing Republican administration may be using Taiwan to needle Beijing.
Some critics predicted that it could complicate the Biden administration’s early relationship with China after tensions sharply escalated between Beijing and Washington under President Trump.
The visit was highly symbolic as the Chinese Communist Party, which lays territorial claims to the democracy of 23 million even though it has never ruled there, has tried to squeeze Taiwan out of international institutions, including all UN bodies.
Last week, the Chinese mission to the United Nations warned the US would pay a “heavy price” if Ms Craft landed in Taiwan, strongly urging it to “stop its crazy provocation” and to “stop creating new difficulties for China-US relations.”
The trip to Taipei was scheduled to last from Wednesday to Friday
Credit: Ritchie B Tongo/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
On Wednesday, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office repeated that it “firmly” opposes any official interactions between the U.S. and Taiwan when asked about the cancellation.
Some analysts have suggested that Taiwan was put in a difficult position over such a high-level visit during the chaos of the waning days of the Trump presidency and might be quietly relieved at the decision to call it off.
“In principle, high level contacts between the US and Taiwan are vital. The US has very strong national interests in a prosperous and secure Taiwan and high-level engagements are an important component of that,” said Drew Thompson, a former US defence official and now a senior research fellow at National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.
“The way that it was announced by Pompeo was flawed in that they linked this visit to the outcomes in Hong Kong which really ignores and, in some ways, denigrates the immense contributions that Taiwan makes to US cooperative efforts around the world,” he said.
“It’s a failure of US policy if Taiwan is either used as a bargaining chip or a means to antagonise the mainland for its bad behaviour,” Mr Thompson said, also citing the complicated timing of the visit during an “atypical transition.”
He added: “It’s not really to Taiwan’s benefit to have this trip right now. There will be other opportunities for the right high-level people to come to Taiwan at the right time.”
Свежие комментарии