China has called on US officials not to let Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen pass through the United States en route to Guatemala next month, days after President-elect Donald Trump irked Beijing by speaking to Tsai in a break with decades of precedent.
The US State Department appeared to reject the call, saying that such transits were based on "long-standing US practice, consistent with the unofficial nature of (US) relations with Taiwan."
China is deeply suspicious of Tsai, whom it thinks wants to push for the formal independence of Taiwan, a self-governing island that Beijing regards as a renegade province.
Her call with Trump on Friday was the first between a US president-elect or president and a Taiwanese leader since President Jimmy Carter switched diplomatic recognition to China from Taiwan in 1979.
Tsai is due to visit Guatemala, one of Taiwan's small band of diplomatic allies, on January 11-12, its foreign minister, Carlos Raul Morales, told Reuters.
Taiwan's Liberty Times, considered close to Tsai's ruling Democratic Progressive Party, said the trip would take place before Trump is inaugurated on January 20 and Tsai's delegation would seek to meet Trump's team, the Liberty Times said.
An adviser to Trump's transition team said he considered it "very unlikely" there would be a meeting between Tsai and Trump if she were to go through New York.
US State Department spokesman Mark Toner said on Monday he had no information whether Tsai would meet US officials if she stopped in transit but said Taiwanese presidents did stop over periodically.
