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TAIPEI (AP) — Outgoing Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández began a three-day shock go to to Taiwan on Friday because the self-ruled island, which can also be claimed by China, worries that the following president of the Central American nation might break off relations and change to diplomatic ties with Beijing.
Hernández and his spouse will meet President Tsai Ing-wen as a part of a celebration of 80 years of diplomatic relations between Taiwan and Honduras. He will even go to the Central American Financial institution for Financial Integration workplace in Taipei, a Honduran growth financial institution.
Hernández’s journey comes simply weeks forward of the presidential election in Honduras. He is because of go away workplace in January and has change into more and more remoted him as he’s dealing with allegations of ties to drug traffickers from U.S. federal prosecutors in New York. His brother had been arrested in Miami in 2018 by U.S. authorities on suspicion of drug trafficking.
Politically, there’s little to achieve in his journey. Hernández will be unable to run for workplace once more, mentioned Antonio C. Hsiang, a professor at La Academia Nacional de Estudios Y Estrategicos, who research Latin America research. As an alternative, Hernández is probably going in Taiwan to hunt assist, monetary or in any other case, he mentioned.
Taiwan, in the meantime, is anxious in regards to the election as one of many main candidates has brazenly mentioned she is in favor of building ties with China, which implies Honduras will stop recognizing Taiwan as a rustic.
Xiomara Castro, the presidential candidate, mentioned in a June 28 submit on her Fb web page: “I imagine in multipolarity and due to that I suggest opening worldwide relations with continental China, which might assist the nation incorporate into the market with the market of the world’s biggest development.”
China has been on a marketing campaign to poach Taiwan’s allies, of which solely 15 stay. China has been utilizing diplomatic and financial strategies to influence nations to modify their diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China.
China says Taiwan isn’t a rustic and is merely one other province, to be reunified by drive if mandatory. Taiwan says it has primarily been functioning independently as a rustic because the two sides break up after a civil conflict in 1949.
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Related Press author Marlon González in Tegucigalpa, Honduras contributed to this report.
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