The US administration on Monday sidestepped questions about whether president-elect Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) would be permitted to visit Washington before his inauguration in May, while some sources said that Ma may already have sparked a diplomatic incident by expressing his wish to visit Washington before informing the US or the Ministry of Foreign affairs beforehand.
"There are no plans for a visit," the office of the spokesman of the US National Security Council, an arm of the White House, told reporters on Monday.
Earlier, both White House spokesman Dana Perino and US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack were asked about a possible Ma visit. Both said they had no information about it. Later, a NSC spokesman said that no visit had been planned.
Taiwan's top representative in Washington, Joseph Wu (
"If the request is made by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or if Mr Ma has approached the ministry to make the request of the US side, TECRO [the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, which Wu heads] will work on it. But so far, we have not received any instructions from Taipei," Wu told the Taipei Times in an interview.
Wu said he had not consulted US officials about the visit, but was confident that the State Department had not received an official request.
Some sources said Ma's expression of interest in visiting Washington may already have violated important diplomatic niceties by not consulting the ministry or making a formal request.
They said that China would likely strongly oppose such a visit, creating a foreign policy dilemma for the Bush administration, which has sought rapprochement with China.
Even after leaving office, former president Lee Teng-hui's (李登輝) trips to Japan and the US continued to draw Beijing's ire, sources said.
A visit by Ma to coordinate US-Taiwan relations, even ahead of his inauguration, would elicit a similar response from Beijing, sources in Washington said.
Nevertheless, some Taiwan supporters in the US felt that a Ma visit would be a good thing, allowing for a face-to-face meeting to iron out problems that could arise during his term.
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