Former US president Bill Clinton met with President Chen Shui-bian (
Chen, who read through My Life before meeting with its author, hosted a dinner banquet for Clinton at the Far Eastern Plaza Hotel Sunday night and arranged a one-hour talk with Clinton at the Taipei Guest House yesterday morning.
Chen gave Clinton a saxophone as a gift at the Sunday banquet. Officials attending the dinner said both men shared their political experiences and that Clinton lauded Chen's courage to seek inter-party cooperation.
"President Chen and Clinton had a great time Sunday night, but they both felt the meeting was too short. So they decided to meet again at the Taipei Guest House Monday morning," Presidential Office Deputy Secretary-General James Huang (
Huang noted that details of the meeting between Chen and Clinton would not be disclosed. Clinton also met with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (
"I found [Chen and Lien] both to be highly intelligent, completely patriotic, devoted to the interests of the people of Taiwan, and not so far apart on some issues as I thought they might be," Clinton said yesterday during an interview with the ETTV channel.
Clinton noted that the Taiwanese people elected Chen by a narrow majority and gave the opposition parties a narrow majority in the legislature.
"What they are saying is that we put you in the same boat. We want you to row and move forward and you have to compromise," he said.
Clinton, who mentioned how the world might move from interdependence to integration in his speech in Taipei on Sunday, said the relationship between China and Taiwan has a lot of similarities to the relationship between blacks and whites in the little town he grew up.
"We are all interdependent. We could not escape each other. You [Taiwan and China] should build on the positive contacts.
Clinton left for Singapore at 5pm yesterday.
Also See Story:
Clinton to Lien: Direct charter flights successful
Two US House of Representatives committees yesterday condemned China’s attempt to orchestrate a crash involving Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) car when she visited the Czech Republic last year as vice president-elect. Czech local media in March last year reported that a Chinese diplomat had run a red light while following Hsiao’s car from the airport, and Czech intelligence last week told local media that Chinese diplomats and agents had also planned to stage a demonstrative car collision. Hsiao on Saturday shared a Reuters news report on the incident through her account on social media platform X and wrote: “I
‘BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS’: The US military’s aim is to continue to make any potential Chinese invasion more difficult than it already is, US General Ronald Clark said The likelihood of China invading Taiwan without contest is “very, very small” because the Taiwan Strait is under constant surveillance by multiple countries, a US general has said. General Ronald Clark, commanding officer of US Army Pacific (USARPAC), the US Army’s largest service component command, made the remarks during a dialogue hosted on Friday by Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Asked by the event host what the Chinese military has learned from its US counterpart over the years, Clark said that the first lesson is that the skill and will of US service members are “unmatched.” The second
STANDING TOGETHER: Amid China’s increasingly aggressive activities, nations must join forces in detecting and dealing with incursions, a Taiwanese official said Two senior Philippine officials and one former official yesterday attended the Taiwan International Ocean Forum in Taipei, the first high-level visit since the Philippines in April lifted a ban on such travel to Taiwan. The Ocean Affairs Council hosted the two-day event at the National Taiwan University Hospital International Convention Center. Philippine Navy spokesman Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad, Coast Guard spokesman Grand Commodore Jay Tarriela and former Philippine Presidential Communications Office assistant secretary Michel del Rosario participated in the forum. More than 100 officials, experts and entrepreneurs from 15 nations participated in the forum, which included discussions on countering China’s hybrid warfare
MORE DEMOCRACY: The only solution to Taiwan’s current democratic issues involves more democracy, including Constitutional Court rulings and citizens exercising their civil rights , Lai said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is not the “motherland” of the Republic of China (ROC) and has never owned Taiwan, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday. The speech was the third in a series of 10 that Lai is scheduled to deliver across Taiwan. Taiwan is facing external threats from China, Lai said at a Lions Clubs International banquet in Hsinchu. For example, on June 21 the army detected 12 Chinese aircraft, eight of which entered Taiwanese waters, as well as six Chinese warships that remained in the waters around Taiwan, he said. Beyond military and political intimidation, Taiwan
RSS