GUATEMALA CITY/ASUNCION – Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te will delay an expected trip to remaining allies in the Americas that would have taken place next month, embassy officials told Reuters on Tuesday, due to damages from a typhoon and as the island faces more torrential rains.
Lai was expected to travel to the Americas next month, as his government seeks to shore up support in a region where many countries have cut diplomatic ties in favor for relations with China, which claims Taiwan as its territory.
However, embassy officials in Guatemala and Paraguay said the visit had been postponed until further notice.
“It had to be postponed because of the typhoon that caused many natural disasters. There is no new date to reschedule the visit,” an embassy official in Guatemala City told Reuters.
A spokesperson at Taiwan’s embassy in Paraguay’s capital Asuncion, where Lai had also been expected to visit, told Reuters the Taiwanese leader did not currently plan to travel abroad.
Earlier on Tuesday, Paraguayan ruling party congressman Hugo Meza said that the country was “wasting time” maintaining diplomatic relations with the Taiwanese. Paraguay is the only country in South America that still recognizes Taiwan.
Lai had also been expected to make stops in Belize and the United States.
Taiwan is still recovering from Typhoon Danas, which struck the island’s densely-populated west coast earlier this month with record winds and brought widespread damage to its electricity grid and some houses.
More recent flooding triggered by a depression has submerged streets and buildings in several towns and villages across southern Taiwan this week, and its weather administration has warned that more intense rain could trigger more landslides. REUTERS
