Sens. Cruz, Wicker call upon U.N. aviation agency to stop excluding Taiwan

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) called upon the United Nations to include Taiwan in the upcoming meeting of its International Civil Aviation Organization.

In a letter to Secretary General Juan Carlos Salazar dated Tuesday, the senators asked why the organization charged with providing the basis for and ensuring international civilian aviation standards would exclude Taiwan, home to one of the world’s busiest airports.

“It is simply not tenable that the organization continue to pursue that mission while excluding Taiwan, one of the world’s largest aviation systems. Aviation safety and global standards for safe and efficient aviation operations have no loyalty or political affiliation,” the senators wrote.

The letter noted that Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport is one of the busiest airports in Asia by passenger volume, consistently handling over 40 million passengers each year, as well as among the ten busiest airports globally for cargo and international freight.

Cruz and Wicker accused the United Nations and its agencies of systematically excluding the democratically governed island at the behest of China’s ruling Communist Party, who has aggressively campaigned abroad that Taiwan is part of its territory.

This letter follows a previous one Cruz sent to the ICAO in February 2020 as they attempted to exclude Taiwan from their international response to the coronavirus.

The U.S. senators said excluding Taiwan in deliberations “related to some of the most consequential moments in global aviation,” such as the grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX in 2019 and the spread of COVID-19 in 2020, undermined the ICAO’s stated mission.  

“Next year Congress will take up, examine, and as needed revise the full range of our national policies related to aviation through the legislative reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration. To maintain its status as a credible multilateral organization, we request that the ICAO allow Taiwan to meaningfully participate during this year’s assembly,” they added.