The US House of Representatives Thursday overwhelmingly approved legislation aimed at expanding high-level military cooperation and contacts between the US and Taiwan, especially in missile defense, anti-submarine warfare and command-and-control capabilities. A parallel measure has been introduced in the Senate.
Both measures would lift the cap on the travel to Taiwan of the most senior US military officers and civilian personnel, and promote "educational exchanges" between the top officials of Taiwan and the US. The purpose, according to the two measures, would be "to improve the defenses of Taiwan against attack by the People's Liberation Army."
The three areas singled out for special attention are "fields identified by the Department of Defense where Taiwan is in most need of assistance," Ryun said in a press release.
The measure will "help make Taiwan more defensively self-sufficient, while at the same time improving its ability to fight alongside the United States in a crisis if necessary," he said.
Both the House and Senate measures are amendments to broader bills authorizing Defense Department programs for fiscal year 2005. The House approved the amendment, proposed by Representative Jim Ryun, Republican, by a 290 to 132 vote, and then approved the amended US$422 billion authorization bill, 391 to 34.
In the Senate, Senator Sam Brownback -- also a Republican -- the chairman of the East Asian and Pacific subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee, proposed the measure Wednesday. But a Brownback aide could not say when and how the proposal will come up in that chamber.
The Pentagon is a strong supporter of the bills, according to congressional staffers. The bills stem from discussions between the Pentagon and the House Armed Services Committee, of which Ryun is a senior member.
"This is something the office of the secretary of defense has supported," Jim Richardson, Ryun's legislative director, told the Taipei Times. "We did this because we thought it was a good idea, and we wanted to help the Defense Department to be able to institute these programs."
The legislation is intended to circumvent efforts by the State Department and White House to stymie an earlier congressional attempt to expand high-level military-to-military cooperation between Washington and Taipei.
The Defense Department, an advocate of closer ties, wrote the report, the State Department and the National Security Council of the White House have prevented the report from being transmitted to Congress, sources say.
The report is said to call for a wide-ranging scope of interactions between the US and Taiwan defense elites in view of what many in Washington fear has been a dangerous decline in recent years in Taiwan's military preparedness to fend off an attack from China.
The House and Senate bills would allow exchanges that focus on threat analysis, military doctrine, force planning, logistical support, intelligence collection and analysis, operational tactics, techniques and procedures, and civil-military relations, including legislative relations.
The activities would include "an exercise, an event and an opportunity for observation." Such activities could take place in either Taiwan or the US.
Currently, only military officers at the level of colonel or below, or defense officials below deputy assistant secretary are allowed to go to Taiwan and deal with Taiwanese officials. The bills would eliminate that ceiling, theoretically opening the way to possible visits to Taiwan by the secretary of defense or the chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff and their Taiwanese counterparts.
Also See Story:
Editorial: Meeting threats with candy floss
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
AIR ALERT: China’s reservation of airspace over the Yellow Sea and East China Sea could be an attempt to test the US’ response ahead of a Trump-Xi meeting, the NSB head said China’s attempts to infiltrate Taiwan are systematic, planned and targeted, with activity shifting from recruiting mid-level military officers to rank-and-file enlisted personnel, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) integrates national security, intelligence operations and “united front” efforts into a dense network to conduct intelligence gathering and espionage in Taiwan, Tsai said at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. It uses specific networks to screen targets through exchange activities and recruiting local collaborators to establish intelligence-gathering organizations, he said. China is also shifting who it targets to lower-ranking military personnel,
RSS