Taiwan says gets Nicaraguan president's backing

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Nicaragua has decided to back Taiwan over diplomatic rival China, the Taiwan president's office said on Wednesday, keeping one of its biggest allies amid concerns it might be dumped by a new pro-Communist regime.

Newly elected President Daniel Ortega will carry on normal diplomatic ties with Taipei, he told a Taiwan delegation headed by President Chen Shui-bian in Managua for the inauguration, a presidential office spokeswoman said.

By leveraging economic growth and chequebook diplomacy, China, which regards the self-ruled Taiwan as a breakaway province unqualified for diplomatic relations, has sought to isolate the island by stripping it of diplomatic allies.

Taiwan has 24 allies now, many of them small, relatively unknown countries, compared with China's 170.

Ortega, a former Sandinista guerrilla and Marxist, switched diplomatic alliances from Taiwan to China in 1985 when his party was in power. But his successor switched back to Taiwan in 1990. Ortega was re-elected on November 7 with 38 percent of the vote.

If Ortega were to switch diplomatic relations from Taiwan to China, Taiwan would lose its second foreign ally in the last 12 months and its seventh since 2000 to China. Taiwan and China split after the Chinese civil war in 1949.

Ortega also told visiting Taiwan Vice Foreign Minister Javier Hou in November that Nicaragua would stick by Taiwan.