President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday that the Dalai Lama is not welcome to visit Taiwan.
Ma, attending a presidential briefing held by the Taiwan Foreign Correspondents Club in Taipei, was asked how he would respond to the Tibetan spiritual leader’s Nov. 28 comments to Elta TV in the northern Indian city of Dharamsala that he would like to visit Taiwan next year.
“We generally welcome religious leaders from all over the world to visit Taiwan, but I think at the current moment the timing isn’t appropriate,” he said.
The comments mark a distinct change of attitude for the president, who on March 23 said he welcomed the Tibetan spiritual leader to visit the nation following his inauguration.
Quizzed about the recent resignation of Financial Supervisory Commission Chairman Gordon Chen (陳樹) and whether it signaled more Cabinet personnel changes to come, Ma at first declined to comment, but later said “there were no plans for a reshuffle before the end of the year.”
On cross-strait issues, Ma said the results of his push to increase the number of Chinese visitors to 3,000 per day had not been very positive, but that he hoped the deal to increase flights inked during Chinese envoy Chen Yunlin’s (陳雲林) recent visit and China’s changes to policy regarding travel to Taiwan would help.
He also said some protesters had been “wrongfully hit by the police” during demonstrations against Chen’s visit, but defended their actions by saying that more police than protesters had been injured.
Ma drew a laugh from the audience when, asked what he thought about China blocking Radio Taiwan International’s broadcast of an interview he did earlier in the day, he replied “that has happened for six decades.”
Ma said that so far there had been no concessions from China on Taiwan’s bid for entry to the World Health Assembly (WHA), but that the next few months ahead of the next WHA meeting in May would be crucial.
On defense, Ma denied that the military had changed its “offshore engagement” strategy — the idea that China’s military forces would be engaged in the Taiwan Strait — in the event of a cross-strait war.
He said the nation’s defense philosophy was aimed at deterring China from starting a “preliminary war” in the belief that an all out initial assault would bring about a quick end.
Talking about the prospect of a pardon for former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), who is in detention on suspicion of embezzlement, forgery, money laundering and accepting bribes, Ma said that “no such action could be taken” until a final verdict had been delivered in the case.
“He has not been indicted yet, so I think it’s really premature to talk about a special pardon,” he said.
Commenting on Ma’s statement on the Dalai Lama, Dawa Tsering, the spiritual leader’s representative in Taiwan, told the Taipei Times by telephone: “The Dalai Lama knows very well that China would put pressure on governments urging them not to allow his visit, so he has always stressed that he would not insist on visiting a country if his visit would make trouble for the country.”
“I understand that President Ma must have his own considerations,” he said, saying that while the Dalai Lama was interested in visiting again, “his schedule is packed for the next six months — so it would be impossible for him to come to Taiwan any time soon anyway.”
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY LOA IOK-SIN
Also See: REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: Much style, some content, no tough questions for Ma
Also See: Ma in a corner over the Dalai Lama
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS