TAIPEI: Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen held a telephone call with Czech president-elect Petr Pavel on Monday, a highly unusual move given the lack of formal ties between their countries.

The two leaders stressed their countries’ “shared values of freedom, democracy and human rights” during their 15-minute call, the Taiwanese president’s office said. Pavel said he hoped to meet Tsai in the future.

Most countries avoid high-level public interaction with Taiwan and its president, not wishing to provoke China. In 2016, US president-elect Donald Trump spoke by telephone with Tsai shortly after winning the election, setting off a storm of protest from Beijing.

Tsai said she hoped that under Pavel’s leadership the Czech Republic would continue to cooperate with Taiwan to promote a “close partnership”, and that she hoped to stay in touch with him.

“Bilateral interaction between Taiwan and the Czech Republic is close and good,” her office summarised Tsai as having said. Pavel, a former army chief and high Nato official who won the Czech presidential election on Saturday, said on Twitter that the two countries “share the values of freedom, democracy, and human rights”.

Published in Dawn, January 31st, 2023