Taiwan rejects claim that Mauritius never approved Lai's flight permit

Taipei, April 25 (CNA) The Presidential Office on Saturday rejected a Mauritian media report saying that the African country had never granted overflight permission for President Lai Ching-te's (賴清德) now-canceled Eswatini trip, calling the claim "rumor-mongering."

Lai was scheduled to leave on Wednesday for Eswatini, Taiwan's sole diplomatic ally in Africa, but the trip was canceled after the Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar abruptly rescinded overflight permissions for his chartered plane under "strong pressure" from China, Presidential Office Secretary-General Pan Men-an (潘孟安) said on Tuesday.

National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said at the time that the Taiwanese government had obtained overflight clearance from all relevant countries, but that the three African countries rescinded them without explanation "only in recent days."

Those accounts from Taiwanese officials differed from a Wednesday report by Mauritian media outlet L'Express, which cited an unnamed source as saying no authorization had been granted by Mauritian authorities to the Taiwanese government.

The outlet, one of Mauritius' most prominent newspapers, also quoted an adviser at Mauritius' Prime Minister's Office as saying that, given the special relations Mauritius maintained with China, "nothing would be done that could jeopardize Sino-Mauritian relations."

Asked about the claim at an event in Taipei on Saturday, Presidential Office spokesperson Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said the airline operating Lai's charter flight had completed the required overflight permit procedures for Mauritius and other countries in mid-April.

She described claims that the flight had not applied for or received such permissions as "untrue."

"If anyone deliberately uses the name of a third country pressured by Beijing to fabricate stories and distort the facts, that is highly inappropriate and clearly rumor-mongering," she added.

Meanwhile, on another occasion in Taipei the same day, Deputy Foreign Minister Chen Ming-chi (陳明祺) said Taiwan has established a long-term friendship with Eswatini, and that diplomatic ties remain intact.

"The Chinese Communist Party has long leveraged neighboring countries and built influence in Africa, including by buying support. All of this makes our long-term friendship with Eswatini all the more valuable," Chen said.

He noted that Eswatini is Taiwan's sole diplomatic ally in Africa and that Taiwan has spared no effort to provide the southern African country with assistance.

"We feel very sorry that President (Lai) could not make the visit this time due to pressure from China," Chen said.