{"id":16992,"date":"2023-04-20T03:06:49","date_gmt":"2023-04-20T03:06:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/taiwan-perplexed-by-paraguay\/"},"modified":"2023-04-20T03:11:27","modified_gmt":"2023-04-20T03:11:27","slug":"taiwan-perplexed-by-paraguay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/taiwan-perplexed-by-paraguay\/","title":{"rendered":"Taiwan &#8216;perplexed&#8217; by Paraguay candidate questioning of ties"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>TAIPEI (Reuters) &#8211;     Taiwan said on Thursday it was perplexed by Paraguay&#8217;s main opposition presidential candidate questioning the benefits of keeping relations with Taipei, just a month after Beijing prised away its ties with another Latin American country.<\/p>\n<p>Efrain Alegre, who leads the centre-left Concertacion Nacional coalition, is seen neck-and-neck in opinion polls with ruling party candidate Santiago Pena in the election at the end of the month.<\/p>\n<p>Alegre has criticised Paraguay&#8217;s current diplomatic relations with Taiwan going back over 60 years, which have made it hard to sell soy and beef to China, a major global buyer, and has said Paraguay does not benefit enough from its Taiwan ties.      <\/p>\n<p>Speaking to reporters in Taipei, Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said Alegre&#8217;s public comments &#8220;certainly have caused some perplexity&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But our colleagues in Paraguay have very close ties with the political parties, the camps and the candidates,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Paraguay has had a long-standing relationship with us, and this relationship is also very stable. We will do our best to maintain diplomatic relations with Paraguay.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Paraguay is one of only 13 countries to maintain formal diplomatic ties with Chinese-claimed Taiwan, and China has been stepping up efforts to win over the island&#8217;s remaining allies.<\/p>\n<p>Honduras severed ties with Taipei in favour of Beijing last month.<\/p>\n<p>China has long argued that democratically ruled Taiwan is part of its own territory with no right to state-to-state ties, a position Taipei strongly rejects. <\/p>\n<p>China demands that countries it has ties with must adopt its position that Taiwan is Chinese territory.<\/p>\n<p \/>\n<p> (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/taiwan-perplexed-by-paraguay\/paraguay-opposition-leader-and-presidential-candidate-efrain-alegre-speaks-with\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3J02P-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3J02P-VIEWIMAGE\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TAIPEI (Reuters) &#8211; Taiwan said on Thursday it was perplexed by Paraguay&#8217;s main opposition presidential candidate questioning the benefits of keeping relations with Taipei, just a month after Beijing prised away its ties with another Latin American country. Efrain Alegre, who leads the centre-left Concertacion Nacional coalition, is seen neck-and-neck in opinion polls with ruling [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":16993,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1222],"tags":[1223],"class_list":["post-16992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-world-news","tag-updated"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3J02P-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16992"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17004,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16992\/revisions\/17004"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}