Wednesday July 1, 2020
By Ben Blanchard
Somaliland Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Minister Yasin Mohammed Hiir and Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu pose for photos after signing an agreement with to establish good relations on July 1, 2020 in Taipei. PHOTO/ Ministry of Foreign Affairs(Taiwan) /@MOFA_Taiwan
TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan and the breakaway African region of Somaliland will establish representative offices in each other’s capitals, Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said on Wednesday, as a diplomatic tug-of-war escalates with Beijing.
Taiwan has formal diplomatic ties with just 15 countries because of pressure from China, which considers the island to be its territory with no right to state-to-state ties. In Africa, only tiny eSwatini maintains full diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
Taiwan signed the agreement in February with Somaliland, strategically located on the Horn of Africa facing war-torn Yemen, but has not announced it previously.
Wu said Taiwan’s contacts with Somaliland, a self-declared state internationally recognised only as an autonomous region of Somalia, dated back to 2009.
He told reporters in Taipei that eight other nations or international bodies had representative offices in Somaliland, including Ethiopia, although not China.
“I think what we are doing is not much different from other countries,” Wu said, adding that Somaliland had declared independence in 1991 and held three presidential elections.
“They have been recognised by many countries as a very free, democratic country in Africa,” he added. “So, in essence, Somaliland is an independent country.”
China’s influence is not far away, though, as it runs its first ever overseas military base in neighbouring Djibouti.
International military forces, including those from China, patrol the waters around Somalia on anti-piracy missions.
China and Taiwan have traded accusations for years of using “dollar diplomacy” in the form of loans and aid in exchange for international recognition, with some countries switching diplomatic ties more than once.
“We will not stop doing what we should be doing because of Chinese pressure,” Wu said. He did not offer details of any aid Taiwan may provide to Somaliland, but said it was rich in energy resources and fishing grounds.
China has become a major economic player in Africa in recent years, lending the continent billions of dollars and drawing complaints from the United States in particular of waging debt diplomacy. China denies the accusations.
Reporting by Ben Blanchard; additional reporting by Yimou Lee; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Clarence Fernandez