TAIPEI / GEORGETOWN (Reuters) – Guyana abruptly terminated an agreement with Taiwan on Thursday to open an office in the South American country, hours after China asked Georgetown to “correct its mistake”.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Thursday that it signed an agreement with Guyana on January 11 to open an office in Taiwan, effectively a de facto embassy for the island that China claims as its sovereign territory, without the right to diplomatic ties.
Guyana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Thursday afternoon that it was revoking the agreement and that it continued to adhere to the “One China” policy.
“The government has not established diplomatic relations or relations with Taiwan and, as a result of the lack of communication of the signed agreement, it was terminated,” says the statement from Guyana.
Guyana traditionally has close ties to China.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin responded to the move by saying that Beijing hoped that Guyana would not engage in official ties with Taiwan, asking the country to “take serious steps to correct its mistake”.
The United States is concerned about the deepening of Chinese influence in Latin America. Guyana, a former British colony, recently started developing offshore oil reserves and is strategically located alongside conflict-ravaged Venezuela, an important Chinese ally with which Guyana has a territorial dispute.
Taiwan has formal diplomatic relations with just 14 countries, including four Caribbean nations.
China’s CNOOC Ltd is part of a consortium with American oil companies Exxon Mobil Corp and Hess Corp that discovered more than 8 billion barrels of recoverable oil reserves in the Stabroek block, off the coast of Guyana, making the country a new energy hotspot.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Neil Marks in Georgetown, Guyana; additional reporting by Gabriel Crossley in Beijing and Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Michael Perry and Marguerita Choy)