Taiwan said on Monday February 26 that it had received assurances from the new Prime Minister of the Tuvalu Islands that relations between the two territories were “eternal”, sweeping away fears about a possible rapprochement between this Pacific nation and Beijing, to the detriment of Taipei. Feleti Teo was officially named Prime Minister of the Tuvalu Islands on Monday, following elections that brought the issue of relations with Taiwan to the forefront. Tuvalu, a Polynesian archipelago made up of sparsely populated atolls, is one of the twelve states which still officially recognize Taipei rather than Beijing.
During the election campaign, the MP and Minister of Finance at the time, Seve Paeniu, suggested that the new government review its relations with Taiwan. Taiwan’s Ambassador to Tuvalu, Andrew Lin, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Monday that he had spoken with Feleti Teo, as well as MPs from the new government, and had received assurances “that the relationship between Taiwan and Tuvalu is firm, solid as stone, lasting and eternal”.
“I have had conversations with each of them and received guarantees from each of them”, declared Mr. Lin, after the inauguration ceremony. Feleti Teo, former Attorney General, was before his election as head of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). He will be invested later this week, according to MP Simon Kofe.
International relations should be high on the new government’s list of priorities
Beijing has actively courted Taiwan’s allies in the Pacific, convincing the Solomon Islands and Kiribati to cut ties with Taipei, to establish diplomatic relations with China in 2019. The small number of countries recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign country have further reduced in January, when Nauru followed suit.
In this context, the elections in Tuvalu and the choice of a new leader have attracted increased attention, and the process has taken longer than expected. In the absence of political parties, the selection of a prime minister takes some time in this micro-state of 11,500 inhabitants which elects sixteen deputies.
International relations are expected to be high on the list of priorities for Mr Teo’s new government, along with issues linked to climate change, with the archipelago being one of the most vulnerable in the world to rising levels of climate change. the sea. Two of the nine islands have already largely disappeared beneath the waves, and climatologists fear that the entire archipelago will be uninhabitable within eighty years.
Jess Marinaccio, a Pacific researcher at the University of California, told AFP it was too early to say whether Teo would maintain ties with Taiwan. “The positions he held were positions where he had to deal with countries that did or did not have relations with Taiwan, and so he probably had to be impartial in that regard. »
“He hasn’t been able to express an opinion one way or the other, so we don’t know if he leans one way or the other,” added the researcher.