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One of Taiwan’s few allies has warned that it may be forced to change Taipei’s diplomatic allegiance to Beijing to gain access to Chinese coronavirus vaccines.
Carlos Alberto Madero, chief coordinator of the Honduran cabinet, resembling a prime minister, told the Financial Times in an interview that the country wanted to avoid breaking ties with Taipei. But he warned that access to vaccines was “much more urgent than anything else.”
The Central American nation has been unable to buy adequate stocks of Covid-19 blows and has suffered delays in deliveries of signed contracts. That has inoculated less than 1 percent of its 9 million people.
“This puts us in a very difficult situation,” Madero said. “[The] The Honduran people are beginning to see China helping its allies and we are beginning to wonder why ours is not helping us. “
It could “definitely lead to changes in foreign policy.”
Madero said Honduras had approached the U.S. for vaccines and been promised help, but had not yet received any.
The U.S. State Department said Washington was “deeply concerned” about the challenges facing Honduras and noted that President Joe Biden had announced Doses of 80 million vaccines would be given away globally in late June. A spokesman did not say whether Honduras would have any.
Only 15 countries have full diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which China claims as part of its territory. Any Honduran measures to drop Taiwan would raise an alarm in Washington.
Over the past five years, China has used its economic power to convince a third of Taiwan’s allies, including Panama in 2017 and El Salvador and the Dominican Republic in 2018, to change diplomatic recognition.
Recently, the United States has intensified its diplomatic engagement with Paraguay after Asuncion said China had offered to supply Covid-19 vaccines in exchange for changing recognition in Beijing. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the president of Paraguay, to an extent that a U.S. official said he aimed to provide public support to Taiwan’s allies.
The US, which has traditionally had a strong influence in the region, has openly discouraged Taiwan’s other Latin American allies from changing. After El Salvador severed ties with Taipei in 2018, Washington said it would re-evaluate their relationship with San Salvador.
Members of the Quad, a diplomatic and security grouping between the United States, Japan, India and Australia, agreed in March. create a plan provide developing countries with spikes to counter China’s vaccine diplomacy. But some lawmakers want Biden’s team to have more of an impact on its southern neighbors.
Bob Menendez, a Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Marco Rubio, a Republican senator, have urged the president to offer vaccines to Latin America and the Caribbean, arguing the need to counter similar moves from China.
“Without the commitment and leadership of the United States, our competitors will continue to strive to use their less effective vaccines as a lever to coerce the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean in support of a diplomatic agenda contrary to our “Senators said in a letter last week.
China has shipped more than half of the 144 million doses of vaccines administered to the ten most populous countries in Latin America. according to an FT analysis.
El Salvador’s access to Chinese vaccines has helped it inoculate nearly 16% of its population.
Honduras has tried to buy Chinese vaccines, but has failed to secure a contract.
“We believe that geopolitics plays a role with vaccines,” Madero said. “Of course, you start to see that countries that have more relations with China have more access to vaccines.”
Juan Orlando Hernández, President of Honduras, has raised the possibility of opening a sales office in China to try to improve relations.
Taipei is struggling to get vaccines for its own people in the midst of first big bud of Covid-19.
Taiwan’s foreign ministry has accused China of “using vaccines to exchange political and diplomatic benefits for countries in urgent need,” which it described as “a shameful act.”
Additional reports from Katrina Manson in Washington
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