The Honduran government requested 2,000 million dollars from Taiwan to restructure its external debt before the president, Xiomara Castro, will announce that her country will seek to establish diplomatic relations with China, Honduran Vice Foreign Minister Tony García reported Thursday.
In statements to Channel 5, in Tegucigalpa, García affirmed that Honduras asked Taiwan for 2,000 million dollars to “restructure the debt.”
“That’s called debt restructuring, it’s called getting that debt on better terms” and Honduras was looking to “pay Taiwan that debt to get relief,” the diplomat explained.
García assured that “a responsible country” seeks the restructuring of its public debt, for which reason Honduras thought that “Taiwan could do it with its reserves, unfortunately, they could not.”
Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu, declared this Thursday that Honduras “asked a high price” for maintaining diplomatic ties with Taipei, to which the Central American country owes 500 million dollars, and affirmed that the island “will not enter the game of monetary diplomacy” from Beijing.
“This government has to have money to give results to this person who trusted us, so it is the duty of this government to seek, first with friends, with Taiwan, a friend of Honduras,” he emphasized.
However, García said that “you have to think about the country, about the opportunities” and that the decision to establish relations with China was made by the Honduran president.
Taiwan withdraws its ambassador to Honduras
Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced Thursday that it will withdraw its ambassador in Tegucigalpa, Vivia Chang, as a sign of “deep dissatisfaction” over the trip to Beijing by Honduran Foreign Minister Eduardo Enrique Reina to establish diplomatic relations with China.
The Honduran vice foreign minister confirmed that Reina is already in China to review the terms that will allow diplomatic relations to be established with Beijing, from whom the Central American country could ask for help to settle the high debt.
“Let’s wait for the results, let’s be optimistic, let’s be positive, let’s not start from now on to say that this is a bad step, because we believe that it is not, and I repeat it is an order from the President of the Republic, it is her vision of approaching the east, west, north and south”, added the vice-chancellor.
The Taiwanese government denied this Wednesday having received an official notification from Honduras regarding the end of its diplomatic ties and advised the Central American nation to be “caution with China’s false promises.”
The rupture of relations with Taiwan by Honduras would reduce to 13 the number of countries with which Taipei maintains official diplomatic relations and would make the Central American nation the ninth country -and the fifth Latin American- that since 2016 has cut with the island to establish ties with Chinese.
