Taiwan: start of the visit of the President of Guatemala

Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei arrived in Taiwan on Monday for an official visit aimed at strengthening diplomatic ties with the island, which his country is one of the last to recognize diplomatically.

During this four-day visit, the Head of State will address the Taiwanese Parliament.

He will also visit a technology company south of Taipei and is expected to attend an event to promote Guatemalan coffee, according to the Taiwanese president's office.

Diplomatic isolation

Sunday, Alejandro Giammattei had declared on Twitter that he was making this trip “

”.

While Beijing strives to isolate Taipei on the international scene, Guatemala is still on the short list of 13 countries that diplomatically recognize Taiwan.

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The announcement of this visit sparked an immediate reaction from Beijing, which immediately called on the Guatemalan government to "

" nor "

".

Comments immediately condemned by the Taiwanese Minister of Foreign Affairs who criticized the "

".

Alejandro Giammattei's visit comes three weeks after Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen's Central American tour of Guatemala and Belize, the only two countries in the region to still maintain official diplomatic relations with the country. island, after the break at the end of March with Honduras in favor of Beijing.

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On the way back, Tsai Ing-wen had met Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy in Los Angeles.

This meeting angered Beijing, which retaliated with three days of major military maneuvers around Taiwan.

China regards Taiwan as a province that it has not yet managed to reunify with the rest of its territory since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. It aims for this reunification, by force if necessary, and does not allow no country to maintain diplomatic relations both with it and with Taiwan.