US Secretary of State Colin Powell sought to reassure China in the wake of President Shui-bian's (陳水扁) successful two-day transit in New York, saying that Washington has "no hidden agenda" regarding Taiwan.
But Powell balanced that with a warning to Beijing not to use force against Taipei.
Powell made his comments, his first since Chen's trip, in a speech at a conference on US-China relations at Texas A&M University arranged by US and Chinese organizations and attended by former Chinese vice premier Qian Qichen (錢其琛).
"President [George W.] Bush has made this point many times," Powell said. "We have no hidden agendas here."
"There is no other agenda but our single policy, our `one-China,' which is clear cut, it is principled, it has served us well for a number of decades and it is set out in the three US-China communiques and in the Taiwan Relations Act," he said.
Powell also issued a strong warning to China about its missile buildup.
"We have to take note of the military build-up opposite Taiwan on the mainland," Powell said.
"Whether China chooses peace or coercion to resolve its differences with Taiwan will tell us a great deal about the kind of role China seeks with its neighbors and seeks with us," he said.
Powell's comments marks the most extensive and definitive statement a senior US administration official has made about cross-strait relations in some time.
The comments follow a year in which US policy toward Taiwan has showed two conflicting faces, complicating the trilateral relationship between Taipei, Beijing and Washington.
One the one hand, trade relations have soured, particularly over the issue of intellectual property rights. Washington has also expressed exasperation over a number of announcements by Chen that Taipei did not alert the Bush administration to beforehand and which threatened to inflame relations with Beijing at a critical period of improved Beijing-Washington ties.
On the other hand, communications between Taiwan and US officials in Washington are, by many accounts, the best in decades, and Chen's New York trip, sanctioned in advance by Washington, represented a major relaxation in the rules of transit and a considerable warming in bilateral ties.
Underlying this are the increasingly close military-to-military ties between Taiwan and Washington, the growing number of official trips on both sides and the presence of a large number of ardently pro-Taiwan officials in and near the top ranks of the Bush administration foreign-policy establishment.
Powell described Taiwan as "the issue that I think is at the top of all of the issues with which we exchange views with our Chinese friends. We know how strongly China feels about Taiwan, and our abiding interest remains in the peaceful resolution of differences between China and Taiwan."
Trying to strike a balance between US ties with Beijing and Taipei, Powell said, "We take our commitments and our obligations to both sides seriously, and I reaffirm that policy here again today before our Chinese friends."
"We applaud the promising cross-strait, people-to-people efforts that are under way, and we hope to see more of these exchanges between the mainland and Taiwan," he said.
Meanwhile, the White House Wednesday declined to comment on whether Bush was Chen's and Taiwan's "guardian angel."
While she was accompanying Chen during his stay New York, Therese Shaheen, the chairwoman of the American Institute in Taiwan in Washington, said that Bush was Chen's guardian angel, a phrase Chen repeated in his transit stop in Anchorage, Alaska, en route from Panama to Taiwan.
Asked about that during his regular press briefing, White House spokesman Scott McClellan skirted the issue.
"Our position on the China-Taiwan issue remains the same, and we've made that position very well-known," McClellan said.
Powell did not mention of his brief encounter with Chen in Panama Monday, and did not answer any questions afterward.
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