US papers shed light on nuke plans

Official US documents, declassified and made public for the first time yesterday, reveal that the United States acted deliberately to thwart efforts by Taiwan to gain nuclear technology beginning in the mid-1960s.

The documents show how the US carefully monitored what it feared were Taiwan's intentions to develop nuclear weapons -- even opposing its efforts to purchase a nuclear reprocessing plant from West Germany in the early 70s.

The documents, released by the National Security Archives, include 30 items dating from between 1966-1976, mainly from the US State Department.

Dr William Burr, author of the Kissinger Transcripts, who obtained the documents from National Security Archives, noted that those documents "provided new and significant details" about American efforts more than three decades ago to forestall Taiwan from becoming a nuclear state.

The documents record how, after the People's Republic of China successfully tested its first nuclear device in 1964, Taiwan had become understandably alarmed -- to the extent that some senior government officials advocated that the only viable response was to come up with a nuclear deterrent of its own.

The documents recount that in 1966, the US became suspicious when officials at its embassy in Israel discovered that Victor Cheng (鄭振華) , the director of the ROC Atomic Energy Institute, and his assistant, had paid for a visit to the Nahal Shorcq reactor.

Archives showed that State Department intelligence had no hard evidence that the ROC intended to develop a nuclear capability, but the situation was ambiguous enough to make key officials decide to send a special study mission to Taiwan to identify those who were at the time advocating the development of nuclear weapons capabilities.

By 1976, Washington had enough concern to make a demarche -- through then-US ambassador Leonard Unger -- that Taiwan formally renounce nuclear weapons development.

Three years before President Carter switched established diplomatic relations to China, Taiwan's Minister of Foreign Affairs Shen Chang-huan (沈昌煥) had, indeed, made the promise that Washington had sought.

Officials in Washington, however, still had information suggesting that the ROC government was not prepared to live up to its public announcement -- prompting Unger to express concern about the reprocessing plant while meeting with Shen. Though there was little evidence to back up these fears, the issue remained a source of controversy between Washington and Taipei well into the 1980s.

In 1988, however, when Colonel Chang Hsien-yi (張憲義), director of the ROC Institute for Nuclear Energy Research, defected to the US -- and whose debriefing was not included in the released documents -- the US learned the extent of Taiwan's efforts.

Speaking in Washington yesterday, Nat Bellochi -- a former chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan -- commented that the US still monitors Taiwan's nuclear development, based on a mutual agreement between the US and Taiwan.

However, he added, Taiwan's plan to develop nuclear weapons is regarded as of historical interest only and that 30 years after the plan was born, it is now of little concern in Washington.

(Further reports on

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