The administration of George W. Bush has rejected suggestions that the time has come for the US and China to write a new joint communique to update the Washing-ton-Taipei-Beijing relationship, one that would reflect political developments in Taipei in recent years.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the "existing framework" of Washington's relations with Taiwan and China is sufficient and that the administration will "stick with that for the moment."
He was responding to an article in Wednesday's Washington Post by former US ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke that said a "fourth communique" is needed because of the changes that have occurred since the last joint communique was signed nearly 19 years ago.
Three communiques, signed in 1972, 1978 and 1982, form the basis of US policy toward Taiwan, along with the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979.
The 1972 communique, signed in Shanghai during former president Richard Nixon's landmark trip to China, commits the US to a "one China" principle and set the stage for the withdrawal of US forces from Taiwan.
The 1978 communique, anticipating the US switch of diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing the following Jan. 1, reiterated a "one China" policy but set the stage for Washington and Taiwan to retain "unofficial" ties. As assistant secretary of state in the Carter administration, Holbrooke oversaw the negotiations that led to this communique.
The 1982 communique reaffirmed the earlier communiques, and pledged Washington to gradually reduce arms sales to Taiwan if Beijing acted to "create conditions conducive" to that aim. That communique followed a difficult period in US-China relations in which former president Ronald Reagan flirted with upgrading relations with Taiwan.
"An enormous amount has happened since then," including Taiwan's democratization, Holbrooke said, that "have created new circumstances not envisioned by the drafters" of the earlier documents.
"It is time for Washington and Beijing to negotiate a fourth communique, one that would address these new issues and update the relationship based on a new realism," he said. This "will present some obvious difficulties, although none as great as those that faced the drafters of the first two."
"At home, there will be voices calling for changes in the old formula on Taiwan -- something that, I believe, would be possible on the margins but not the core issue of independence," he said.
While another communique might not head off future confrontations with China, it would help build a stronger relationship "and would perhaps help Taiwan open a more productive dialogue with the mainland," he said.
In addition to Taiwan's democratization, Holbrooke cited the end of the Cold War, the Tiananmen Square massacre and later US-China frictions, Hong Kong's reversion to Chinese control, China's entry into the WTO, and recent crackdowns by Beijing on people in Tibet.
Boucher said a new document is not needed.
"The existing framework, we think, allows us to pursue the goals that we need to pursue with China. And we'll stick with that for the moment," he told reporters at his daily press briefing.
Last year, another former senior US diplomat, J. Stapleton Roy, opened what has become a so-far muted drive for a new communique, using much the same arguments as Holbrooke's in advocating that Washington consider a new document.
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