Papua New Guinea -- what was at stake? --UPDATE: PNG Officials DID meet with Taiwan scammers

UPDATE: The Australian reports that PNG officials did meet with the middlemen....

PNG's Post Courier newspaper said yesterday Mr Tiensten, who was trade and industry minister in 2006, had met the middlemen from Taiwan at a series of meetings in Port Moresby, while he was also acting foreign minister. Mr Tiensten said a PNG lawyer, Florian Gubon, "was helping (the Taiwanese) mission" to Port Moresby - where the Taiwan Government has a trade office. Dr Gubon accompanied Mr Bonga, then chairman of the Port Moresby City-owned water company Eda Ranu, to Taipei, also in 2006. Mr Bonga said he went there "to see how we could improve city sewerage, and about water bottling".

PNG's National newspaper yesterday ran a photo showing Mr Bonga, Dr Gubon, Mr Chiou and Mr Wu at a meeting together in Taipei in 2006.

More to come, I'm sure....

The Taiwan News editorializes on the PNG affair that has caused heads to roll....

The flap has already led to the resignations of ex- vice premier and perennial DPP strategist Chiou I-jen, former foreign minister James Huang and ex-deputy defense minister Ko Cheng-heng and the detention of Taiwan-Singaporean businessman and alleged con-man Wu Ssu-tsai and flight of Taiwan businessman Chin Chi-jiu and the disappearance of nearly US$30 million in confidential diplomatic funds.

...and rightly so. I think, like Taiwan News, that the Ministry will be cleared of criminal wrongdoing, but what the editorial really focuses on is the lost diplomatic opportunity:

The significance of this diplomatic failure is best understood not by obsession with alleged "scandals" or a focus on the PNG alone but with reference to the wider context of Taiwan's efforts to consolidate a cluster of comprehensive partnerships in the Pacific and expand the scope of this community in order to gain strategic influence and direct participation in the 14-nation Pacific Island Forum.

Indeed, just as Chiou and Huang were making their secret approach for ties with Port Moresby in the late summer of 2006, Taiwan had initiated a new approach in its management of relations with its six Pacific island allies which surfaced in the "First Taiwan - Pacific Island Allies Summit" held in Palau in September 2006 in which President Chen Shui-bian participated.

The Palau summit, followed by a Majuro Summit in August 2007, marked Taiwan's shift from a focus on defensive bilateral ties to a more proactive and comprehensive multilateral approach aimed at improving governance, grassroots health and education and economic development in the context of building a "democratic community" in implicit cooperation with the PIF's long-term "Pacific Plan."

The strength of this approach has been shown in the resiliency of Taiwan's ties with the Marshall Islands, Nauru and the Solomon Islands, all of which have had changes in government in the last year.

Through this example, Taiwan has also improved ties with Australia and New Zealand, especially in contrast with the PRC, which is playing the neighborhood "bad boy" by acting as the main prop for the military regime in Fuji and the repressive monarchy in Tonga, which has been under martial law for over 18 months.

Although Taiwan has full diplomatic ties with six PIF 14 members, Taipei remains excluded from all formal PIF activities and can only hold "informal" dialogue with the PIF members at their annual meetings and is excluded from the most important deliberations and planning processes of this organization, which is gradually evolving into a regional trade and security organization of strategic importance.

However, Taiwan only needs one or at most two more diplomatic allies to gain sufficient support within the PIF to upgrade its status into at least a full "dialogue partner" on an equal footing with the United States, Canada and the PRC itself or even direct membership.

Official affiliation with the PIF would have marked a huge strategic advance for Taiwan's international status and a major step in counteracting the PRC's global "full court press."

Too bad incompetence blew up this opportunity to move forward in an international forum.

Also on tap today: Taiwan's Minister of Health in the Vancouver Sun on WHO entry.

[Taiwan]