TAIPEI: Taiwan will boost military exchanges with the United States to curb “authoritarian expansionism,” President Tsai Ing-wen said Tuesday after meeting with visiting US lawmakers.
The five-day US Congressional visit comes after a top US defense official reportedly made a rare and highly secretive stopover to the self-ruled island as Washington-Beijing tensions flared over alleged Chinese spy balloons.
“Taiwan and the United States continue to bolster military exchanges,” Tsai said after convening with the US delegation at her office in Taipei.
“Going forward, Taiwan will cooperate even more actively with the United States and other democratic partners to confront such global challenges as authoritarian expansionism and climate change.”
Tsai did not provide further details on what the future exchanges might entail.
Washington diplomatically recognizes Beijing over Taipei, but is the self-governing island’s most important international benefactor and supports Taiwan’s right to decide its own future.
Beijing, which claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has vowed to seize it one day, opposes any official exchanges with the democracy and has reacted with anger to a flurry of trips to the island by US politicians in recent years.
President Tsai: Taiwan to bolster military ties with United States
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President Tsai: Taiwan to bolster military ties with United States
- ‘Taiwan will cooperate even more actively with the United States and other democratic partners to confront global challenges’
Palestinian ambassador condemns British Museum’s removal of the word ‘Palestine’ from displays
- The museum updated some exhibits in its ancient Middle East galleries to replace ‘Palestine’ with ‘Canaanite’
- It followed complaints from a pro-Israel group that use of the word ‘Palestine’ could obscure the ‘history of the Jewish people’
LONDON: The Palestinian ambassador to the UK, Husam Zomlot, condemned a decision by the British Museum in London to remove the word “Palestine” from certain displays, following pressure from a pro-Israel group.
“Cultural institutions must not become arenas for political campaigns,” the Palestinian Wafa news agency reported Zomlot as saying on Monday. “Palestine exists. It has always existed and it always will.”
The British Museum updated some displays in its ancient Middle East galleries to replace the word “Palestine” with “Canaanite,” The Guardian newspaper reported.
It did so after the group UK Lawyers for Israel expressed concern that the inclusion of the word “Palestine” in displays related to the ancient Levant and Egypt could obscure the “history of Israel and the Jewish people.”
In a letter to the director of the museum, Nicholas Cullinan, they wrote: “Applying a single name — Palestine — retrospectively to the entire region, across thousands of years, erases historical changes and creates a false impression of continuity.”
The museum said it views the word “Palestine” to be no longer considered historically “neutral,” and that it might be interpreted as a reference to political territory.
However, the Palestinian embassy said: “Attempts to cast the very name ‘Palestine’ as controversial risk contributing to a broader climate that normalizes the denial of Palestinian existence at a time when the Palestinian people in Gaza face an ongoing genocide, and their fellow Palestinians in the West Bank face ongoing ethnic cleansing, annexation and state-sponsored violence.”
More than 9,000 people have so far signed a Change.org petition calling on the museum to reverse its decision, arguing that it lacks historical support and erases Palestinian presence from public memory.
