Despite the fact that time is running short, the Presidential Office said yesterday there was still a chance the White House would send the arms package bill to Congress before its session ends tomorrow.
An official at the Presidential Office, who asked to remain anonymous, said the seven items included in the arms procurement package Taiwan has requested from Washington have obtained the support of the US Department of Defense. The defense department has sent it to the Department of State, pending the approval of Congress, the officials said.
While prospects for the sales to get through the necessary congressional notification process looked dim, the official said it was not too late if the package could make it to Congress in time.
The official made the remarks in response to a front-page story in the Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday that said the National Security Council and its representative office in the US had provided President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) with overly optimistic information that led him to “misjudge” the situation.
Ma said earlier this month that all signs showed that the White House would soon ask Congress to complete the procedures for the seven items requested by Taipei.
The report said the US Department of State told Taiwanese reporters in Washington on Friday they had notified Congress of arms sales to France, Pakistan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The interagency process for the arms sales to Taiwan, however, had yet to be decided on, the report said.
On Friday, the Taipei Times reported that the prospects of the sales getting through the congressional notification process this year appeared to have died on Friday, which was to have been the final day of the two-year 110th Congress’ term.
Moreover, prospects for a lengthy “lame duck” session after November’s elections that might have allowed the process to continue seemed to have faded after the House on Wednesday approved a stop-gap bill to finance government operations through March.
The year-long freeze has halted progress on US$11 billion to US$12 billion in arms sales that the Bush administration had approved in April 2001.
Members of Congress have castigated the Bush administration for the decision, saying it violates the Taiwan Relations Act pledge to sell Taipei defensive weapons and blaming the administration of trying to curry favor with Beijing at Taiwan’s expense.
The House of Representatives has approved a bill requiring the Bush administration to level with Congress on arms sales to Taiwan. The bill is seen as a strong endorsement of ending the year-long freeze imposed by the White House.
In letters to the US House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman sent on Tuesday, the Department of State and the Department of Justice criticized a bill approved by the US House of Representatives last week aimed at prodding the administration into ending its freeze on arms sales to Taiwan. The letter said the bill would impose unconstitutional requirements on the executive branch and harm the president’s foreign policy-making authority.
The State Department said “the administration currently is engaged in an interagency review of Taiwan’s 2008 requests to purchase certain defense articles and services.”
The head of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign and National Defense Committee, Lin Yu-fang (林郁方), downplayed the security impact of the dragging initiative yesterday.
Lin said this was because the US is preoccupied with economic difficulties. He said it was understandable that the Bush administration would discreetly handle Taiwan-US relations because China holds between US$500 billion and US$950 billion in US government bonds.
“[But] the existence of the Republic of China is important to the US [in terms of strategic significance],” he said. “Therefore, the US policy of arms sales to Taiwan will remain unchanged no matter who is elected the next US president.”
The Legislative Yuan broke a four-year gridlock on June 15 last year by approving the long-stalled government budget requests for an arms procurement package of 12 P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft, eight diesel-electric submarines and six PAC-3 anti-missile batteries. The former Democratic Progressive Party government’s proposal to acquire the three major weapon systems was submitted to the legislature for review in June 2004, but had been blocked by the pan-blue-dominated legislature.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus secretary-general Chang Sho-wen (張碩文) said yesterday that Taiwan needs to enhance its defense capabilities and Taiwan’s stance on the arms package remained unchanged.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS