Palau’s president raises threat of pivot to Beijing if US funds are delayed further

Washington’s delay in providing economic help to the Pacific island nation Palau has made some local leaders more willing to drop diplomatic ties to Taiwan in exchange for Beijing’s financial assistance, the country’s president has warned.

“The leaders here (some of whom have done ‘business’ with the PRC) who want to accept its seemingly attractive economic offers – at the cost of shifting alliances, beginning with sacrificing Taiwan,” President Surangel Whipps Jnr wrote in a letter dated February 6.

The letter was sent to a US senator whose name was redacted from the copy first posted on Wednesday by Indo-Pacific expert Cleo Paskal on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. Whipps reposted Paskal’s post on his own X account.

Palau, an archipelago of more than 500 islands, is one of 11 nations that continue to maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Since 2016, Taiwan has lost around a dozen diplomatic allies.

Beijing considers Taiwan a renegade province that is to be united eventually with the mainland, by force if necessary.

Most countries, including the US, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the self-governed island by force and is committed to supplying it with weapons.

Early Tuesday morning, a bipartisan $95 billion foreign aid package passed the US Senate but it failed to include money for the newly negotiated Compact of Free Association (Cofa), a pact that binds the US closely with three Pacific island nations – Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau.

The bill, highly politicised in this presidential election year, is primarily intended to expedite US$60 billion in aid to Ukraine. But it is unlikely to pass the House, with Speaker Mike Johnson