Taiwan row mars Pacific summit

The 53rd Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) has altered its final communique to remove a reference to Taiwan, after a senior Chinese diplomat publicly criticized the document. Organizers have blamed the wording on an error.

The group of 18 island nations, along with Australia and New Zealand, convened in Tonga last week. The initial version of the joint statement released early on Friday included a paragraph that “reaffirmed the 1992 Leaders decision on relations with Taiwan/Republic of China,” which allows Taipei to have representation at meetings as a “development partner.”

China, which has the higher status of a “dialogue partner” at the PIF, considers Taiwan to be part of its territory and opposes any statements that it perceives as elevating the self-governed island on the world stage. Beijing’s ambassador to the Pacific, Qian Bo, lashed out at the wording, calling it “a surprising mistake” that “must be corrected.”

His call was apparently heeded, as the PIF secretariat removed the document from the forum’s website and replaced it with a new version, in which the relevant paragraph was deleted in its entirety. A spokesperson for the organization blamed an error for the incident.

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“The version as finalized does not change nor impact the decisions of the meeting, nor any standing decisions of the forum leaders,” the statement said. “The communique is a consensus-based document, reflecting the agreed decisions and views of all [members].”

Nations in the PIF have conflicting stances on Taiwan’s status. Three – Palau, the Marshall Islands, and Tuvalu – have diplomatic ties with Taipei, while 15 take the side of Beijing.

Taiwan’s de facto autonomy stems from the Chinese civil war of the 1940s, during which nationalist forces retreated to the island, while the communists took control of the mainland.

Taipei has condemned the PIF’s alteration of the language, accusing Beijing of making a “rude and unreasonable intervention” and “irrational behavior.”

Kiribati Education Minister Alexander Teabo, who headed his nation’s delegation at the summit, lamented that the issue had marred the event.

“Taiwan and China have their own internal politics… and now pushing it into the forum,” he told Radio New Zealand (RNZ).

The communique incident was partially fueled by a short clip, filmed by a reporter for RNZ on the sidelines of the summit, in which Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown told Qian: “We’ll remove it,” in apparent reference to the Taiwan paragraph.