US Vice President Dick Cheney said yesterday that although the US continues to support a "one-China" policy, it is "serious" about defending Taiwan from any threat of force from China.
"We've said that whatever happens in the future with respect to reunification needs to happen through peaceful means, there should be no resort to force," he said in an interview with Fox television. "A change of status needs to be done through negotiations."
Last Wednesday, President George W. Bush -- in a TV interview on Good Morning America, in answer to a question whether the US had "an obligation to defend the Taiwanese?" -- answered "Yes, we do, and the Chinese must understand that."
Bush reiterated that the US would do "Whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself."
Cheney said Bush's statement "means we're very serious about defending Taiwan," and was a step away from the ambiguous language used in the past.
"The kind of diplomatic ambiguity people talk about may be okay in diplomacy sometimes, but when we get into the area where one side is displaying increasingly aggressive posture ... towards the other, then its appropriate to clarify that we're serious about this," he said.
Cheney said the Bush administration is "less ambiguous around the world," with a style that differs from former president Bill Clinton. "What we have now is a straight-talking president from Texas who says exactly what he thinks, people around the world will get used to that."
In an interview on CNN on Friday, Cheney said that Bush's remarks on Taiwan were meant to reinforce the notion that the US wants China's differences with the nation to be resolved peacefully.
The US "has insisted over the years that any change in the status between Taipei and Beijing, in terms of a closer relationship and so forth, needs to be resolved by peaceful means," he said.
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