US senators push to upgrade Taiwan’s status in regional development bank
- Senators introduce bill seeking backing for the island’s admission to the Inter-American Development Bank as a non-borrowing member
- Aim is to ‘champion Taiwan’s international engagement and demonstrate our unwavering commitment to the people of Taiwan’, Senator Robert Menendez says
The measure would require the State Department to provide Congress with a strategy to secure diplomatic support for Taiwan’s membership, a promotion from its current observer status.
“We are committed to continue working to ensure the United States does everything in its power to champion Taiwan’s international engagement and demonstrate our unwavering commitment to the people of Taiwan,” Senator Robert Menendez, Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement.
China in recent weeks has staged repeated air missions over the Taiwan Strait, the waterway separating the island and the mainland.
Menendez introduced the bill with Democratic Senators Tim Kaine and Ed Markey and Republican Senators Jim Risch, Jim Inhofe and Marco Rubio. Risch is the top Republican on the foreign relations panel and Inhofe is the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The lawmakers said Taiwan had demonstrated that it could play an important role in the western hemisphere and contributed to the growth of economies in Latin America and the Caribbean.