St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves on Wednesday said the government of SVG is calling upon the People’s Republic of China to desist from the military exercises designed to threaten or intimidate the people of Taiwan.
From August 4 to 7, the Chinese military on Tuesday will hold live-fire drills in six maritime areas surrounding the self-ruled island and their respective airspace, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency.
Gonsalves on Wednesday said SVG believe in the peaceful settlement of disputes.
“There has been a dispute since 1949 between mainland China and Taiwan. Bought people of Taiwan and of mainland China are part of the Chinese civilization. However, civilization can have different political expressions and there are different legitimate political expressions of the Chinese civilization finding themselves in the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan”.
Gonsalves stated that whatever challenge, the contradictions, the difficulties, the problems between those two peoples in those two territories of the same civilization It is for them to sort out their problems peacefully.
“Now, It is surely excessive with the response, because the speaker of the US House Of Representative Nancy Pelosi visits Taiwan, that you have all this Saber rattling. It does nothing for World Peace. It does nothing for peace against the Taiwan Straits. It does nothing for the reconciliation of peoples in the same civilization with separate legitimate political expressions. It does nothing to aid any resolution of any conflict, in fact, It exacerbates the problems and worse it has a spillover effect on the rest of the world”.
Gonsalves said given all the turmoil already in the world in the global political system, in the global economy exacerbated already by the war in Ukraine and now worsening tensions across the Taiwan Strait it affects people not just directly within the Chinese civilization, but they affect country’s as far away as St Vincent and the Grenadines.
“I am repeating my request over the airwaves, and I will write the Chinese government to desist from this Saber rattling. And this form of conduct which by any reasonable reflection would be intimidatory and a threat to the people of Taiwan and to peace and security across the Taiwan streets and in East Asia and the world”.
Gonsalves says it is better to settle disputes peacefully and it is better to be talking and talking than warring and warring.
