The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) said yesterday it would vote to approve funding for the purchase of a US anti-missile system, having blocked the budget in the legislature for more than two years.
KMT Legislator Su Chi (蘇起) said the KMT caucus agreed to pass the arms procurement budget during cross-party negotiations on Tuesday out of concern for the nation's defense capability.
Su said the caucus agreed to pass parts of the NT$6.3 billion (US$191 million) arms procurement proposal, including the purchase of 12 Lockheed P-3C surveillance aircraft and 384 Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles, but did not reach a consensus on the purchase of eight diesel submarines.
Su said the US had offered to sell the submarines for about NT$12 billion each, but the government had only budgeted approximately NT$2.2 billion for the purchase. He said the caucus would continue to debate the submarine purchase next year.
KMT caucus Secretary-General Kuo Su-chun (
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator David Huang (黃偉哲), meanwhile, complained about the timing of the KMT's decision.
"It would be difficult to persuade me that the KMT's decision to pass the budget has nothing to do with the election," Huang said. "After all, they have boycotted this proposal since 2004 and threatened national security [as a result]. Now they suddenly decide to approve it."
The Ministry of National Defense welcomed the KMT's decision.
"[The procurement] will assist the military in maintaining our self-defense capability," Lieutenant General Chen Kuo-hsiang (陳國祥), director-general of the ministry's General Political Warfare Bureau told the National Defense Committee.
The arms package was originally approved by the US government in 2001 and was first submitted to the legislature by the Cabinet in 2004.
The purchase was initially proposed as part of a NT$610.8 billion special budget, but this was later trimmed to NT$6.3 billion by the legislature.
Complaining of the purchase's cost and possible cross-strait ramifications, the pan-blue camp have since used their majority in the legislature to stall the procurement process.
Meanwhile, the DPP criticized the KMT yesterday for habitually blocking bills and government budgets, thereby hampering the country's progress and economic development.
Hsieh Hsin-ni (
They also froze government budgets from 2004 through this year amounting to NT$532 billion, she said.
Additional reporting by Ko Shu-ling
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) today accepted an invitation from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to lead a delegation to China next month, saying she hopes to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations and bring stability to the Taiwan Strait. “I am grateful and happy to accept this invitation,” Cheng said in a statement from the KMT chairperson’s office. Cheng said she hopes both sides can work together to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations, enhance exchange and cooperation, bring stability to the Taiwan Strait and improve people’s livelihoods. At today's news conference, Cheng said any efforts to
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
RSS