The Cabinet is temporarily suspending high-ranking exchanges with France to protest French President Jacques Chirac's comments on Taiwan's planned referendum, Premier Yu Shyi-kun announced yesterday.
"We feel extremely sorry about Chirac's bowing to China and caving in to commercial interests. His talk not only is detrimental to our democratic development but also violates the true spirit of freedom and democracy," Yu said.
Under the premise of reciprocity, Yu said, the government will make adjustments to the relationship between the two countries in accordance with the French government's sincerity in resolving the matter.
Yu made the remarks yesterday morning after attending the monthly meeting of the Cabinet's Veterans Affairs Commission.
According to Yu, the Cabinet learned details of Chirac's talks on Saturday, two days before Chirac publicly denounced the referendum proposed by President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
"We decided to adopt a counterattack measure and asked two Cabinet officials to cancel their scheduled trips to France," Yu said.
The two officials are National Science Council Chairman Wei Che-ho (
Wei, who is on a trip to Europe, will remove France from his itinerary and stay only in Germany to promote scientific collaboration between the two countries. Tchen has cancelled a trip to France scheduled from Wednesday to Feb 8.
While the suspension of exchanges applies to high-ranking officials only, cultural and economic exchanges are unaffected, Cabinet Spokesman Lin Chia-lung (
Lin said that Taiwan, as an independent sovereign state, is obliged to unequivocally express its stance.
"We should express our stance in a firm and appropriate manner but never overreact," he said. "As Chirac's comments are merely political language made in response to the request of visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao (
Lin, however, warned the French government that indulging China was quixotic.
"It might acquire some short-term gain from China but end up being manipulated by it," Lin said. "What EU nations and other countries should do while dealing with China is to collaborate with each other under a strong leadership instead of fighting the battle alone."
Also see story:
CHAMPIONS: President Lai congratulated the players’ outstanding performance, cheering them for marking a new milestone in the nation’s baseball history Taiwan on Sunday won their first Little League Baseball World Series (LLBWS) title in 29 years, as Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School defeated a team from Las Vegas 7-0 in the championship game in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It was Taiwan’s first championship in the annual tournament since 1996, ending a nearly three-decade drought. “It has been a very long time ... and we finally made it,” Taiwan manager Lai Min-nan (賴敏男) said after the game. Lai said he last managed a Dong Yuan team in at the South Williamsport in 2015, when they were eliminated after four games. “There is
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have declared they survived recall votes to remove them from office today, although official results are still pending as the vote counting continues. Although final tallies from the Central Election Commission (CEC) are still pending, preliminary results indicate that the recall campaigns against all seven KMT lawmakers have fallen short. As of 6:10 pm, Taichung Legislators Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) and Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔), Hsinchu County Legislator Lin Szu-ming (林思銘), Nantou County Legislator Ma Wen-chun (馬文君) and New Taipei City Legislator Lo Ming-tsai (羅明才) had all announced they
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) yesterday visited Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), as the chipmaker prepares for volume production of Nvidia’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) chips. It was Huang’s third trip to Taiwan this year, indicating that Nvidia’s supply chain is deeply connected to Taiwan. Its partners also include packager Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密) and server makers Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and Quanta Computer Inc (廣達). “My main purpose is to visit TSMC,” Huang said yesterday. “As you know, we have next-generation architecture called Rubin. Rubin is very advanced. We have now taped out six brand new
POWER PLANT POLL: The TPP said the number of ‘yes’ votes showed that the energy policy should be corrected, and the KMT said the result was a win for the people’s voice The government does not rule out advanced nuclear energy generation if it meets the government’s three prerequisites, President William Lai (賴清德) said last night after the number of votes in favor of restarting a nuclear power plant outnumbered the “no” votes in a referendum yesterday. The referendum failed to pass, despite getting more “yes” votes, as the Referendum Act (公民投票法) states that the vote would only pass if the votes in favor account for more than one-fourth of the total number of eligible voters and outnumber the opposing votes. Yesterday’s referendum question was: “Do you agree that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant