Taiwan has not been invited to the assembly meeting of a United Nations aviation agency, the latest sign of the pressure China is bringing to bear on the new independence-leaning government of the self-ruled island it views as a renegade province.
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Taiwan said yesterday China had blocked it from attending a major United Nations aviation meeting, the latest setback to its troubled campaign for global recognition. But the island had been hoping to attend the triennial meeting of the United Nations aviation agency in Montreal later this month, after it was admitted in 2013 in a major breakthrough.
It said China, which claims sovereignty over Taiwan, was behind their rejection but did not say how that information was obtained.
The ICAO said that the 2016 assembly, which would be held in Montreal, did not follow the same pattern as the 2013 meeting in when China agreed to Taiwan’s participation in the assembly.
While Tsai’s China-friendly predecessor Ma Ying-jeou, from the Nationalist Party, has championed the “92 Consensus”, Tsai so far has refused to bow to Beijing’s demand.
“While arrangements had been made for their attendance at the last (38th) session of the assembly, there are no such arrangements for this one”.
On the same day, spokesman for the State Council’s Taiwan Affairs Office Ma Xiaoguang said that Taiwan can not participate in the ICAO assembly because the island’s current Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration refuses to recognize the 1992 Consensus, which lays out the one-China principle. Beijing said the move reflected the fact that Taiwan was not a sovereign state. However, relations with Beijing have stalled since Tsai took office in May. The agency appointed China’s Fang Liu as secretary-general a year ago.
CNA said in a report that the Foreign Ministry delivered a letter to the Food and Agricultural Organization protesting against what it called “discriminatory treatment” against two Taiwanese representatives who were barred from the organization’s Committee on Fisheries meeting being held in Italy this week.
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“The worldwide society recognizes China’s legal position in representing China, and Taiwan itself has no qualification to participate in worldwide affairs and activities for sovereign states”, Lü Cuncheng, a Beijing-based Taiwan studies expert, told the Global Times on Friday. Beijing has cut off all official communication with Taiwan since the new government took office.
