President Ma Ying-jeou met on the morning of November 14 with the Republic of Haiti's President of the Senate Simon Dieuseul Desras. The president extended a cordial welcome to Senate President Desras on his visit to Taiwan.
In remarks, President Ma stated that the ROC was Asia's first democratic republic, while the Republic of Haiti was the first nation in Latin America and the Caribbean to emerge from colonial rule and gain its independence. Haiti, he pointed out, has a history dating back 208 years to 1804. The ROC and Haiti established formal diplomatic relations in 1956, and since then the two have maintained a close relationship, with continued cooperation projects having helped to enhance mutual friendship, he said.
The president noted that Haiti suffered a catastrophic earthquake in January 2010, and an ROC rescue and relief team departed from Taiwan within 12 hours of the tremor, reaching Haiti very quickly to provide rescue assistance. In the days following, private donations of funds and materials from Taiwan were rapidly transported to Haiti, and the president traveled to Latin America at the end of that month to attend the inauguration ceremonies in the Republic of Honduras for President Porfirio Lobo Sosa, after which he met with former Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive to exchange opinions on disaster relief work. The ROC government agreed at that time to assist Haiti in four areas of reconstruction, namely: erecting shelters and homes for disaster victims; engaging in public health cooperation; providing vocational training; and caring for children and orphans. On August 18 of this year, he said, the New Hope Village was completed and inaugurated, marking a new page in the ROC's disaster reconstruction assistance to Haiti. The village has paved the way for disaster victims to start new lives, he said.
President Ma also mentioned that Hurricane Sandy recently swept through Haiti, causing considerable loss of life and property damage. The president took the opportunity to express his condolences and deepest sympathies to the people of Haiti, and stated that the ROC government will continue to provide needed assistance to quickly complete relief efforts and provide shelter to victims.
The president remarked that since taking office in 2008 he has strived to ease the deadlock between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. Over this period of time, the two sides have signed 18 agreements, enabling the cross-strait relationship to become the most peaceful and stable that it has been in the past 60 years, he said. Meanwhile, the government is also sparing no effort to improve the ROC's international relationships and expand its participation in the international community. Besides continuing to strengthen cooperation with its diplomatic allies and enhancing substantive relations with them, the ROC has also adopted a "viable diplomacy" policy that has yielded considerable results. President Ma expressed his deepest appreciation to Haiti for speaking on behalf of the ROC in many international venues, pointing out that the Haitian Senate in 2011 passed resolutions supporting observer status for Taiwan in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the International Civil Aviation Organization.
President Ma stated that one-third of the seats in Haiti's Senate will be contested in elections next year, adding that the willingness of Senate President Desras to take time out of his busy schedule amid re-election work points to the stable alliance between the two countries.
The president emphasized that the ROC is a peace-loving nation, and that he introduced the East China Sea Peace Initiative to address the controversy regarding sovereignty over the Diaoyutai Islets. President Ma said he has urged all concerned parties to turn to peaceful negotiation to resolve disputes, and he expressed his hopes that the Haitian government will fully support this initiative.
Senate President Desras was accompanied to the Presidential Office by Rachel Coupaud, Charge d'Affairs a.i. of the Embassy of the Republic of Haiti to the ROC, to meet President Ma. Also attending the meeting was National Security Council Deputy Secretary-General Philip Y. M. Yang (楊永明).