A major US congressional committee has adopted an amendment to a budget bill urging US President Barack Obama to sell advanced F-16C/D aircraft and diesel-electric submarines to Taiwan.
The amendment came shortly before US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that Obama would make a decision by Oct. 1 on whether he would sell the fighters.
Over the past few months, the US Congress has made it very clear to the Obama administration that it is in favor of selling arms to Taiwan. In the latest move, Democratic US representatives Gerry Connolly and Howard Berman proposed the F-16C/D amendment, while -Republican US Representative Dan Burton added to it the proposed sale of diesel-electric submarines.
The amendment was approved by voice vote in the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee.
“The president should take immediate steps to sell to Taiwan all the F-16 fighter jets that are needed by Taiwan, including new F-16C/D aircraft and upgrades to the existing F-16A/B fleet,” it says.
The amendment adds that the diesel-electric submarines offered to Taiwan by the US in 2001 should also be sold to Taiwan once Taipei has budgeted for them.
Taiwan’s supporters in the US were “thrilled” by the amendment and felt that it would bring real pressure to bear on the White House to go ahead with the arms sale, even though it was certain to damage US relations with China.
However, the euphoria was short lived and soon dampened by the Clinton announcement and the implications of its timing.
The amendment says that the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) states that “the US will make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.”
It adds that a US Department of Defense report on the military power of Beijing last year stated that “China’s military buildup opposite Taiwan continued unabated” and that China “is developing the capability to deter Taiwan independence, or influence Taiwan to settle the dispute on Beijing’s terms.”
The amendment says that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) asked the US in a video address on May 12 last year to provide Taiwan with the necessary weapons to keep its aerial integrity intact.
“The US, in accordance with the TRA, should continue to make available to Taiwan such defense articles and services as may be necessary for Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability,” the amendment says.
It has been added to the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for next year, which in effect provides the budget for the US Department of State.
US Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Republican who chairs the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, is trying to cut US$6.4 billion from Obama’s budget request for the US Department of State.
“My legislation protects and advances our national security interests and priorities, while rejecting the notion that it takes more government and more spending to do so,” she said.
The Washington Times reported this week that Evan Medeiros, the National Security Council specialist dealing with Taiwan, was being blamed by congressional and Pentagon sources “for preventing the US sales of 66 advanced F-16 jets to Taiwan that is expected to anger Beijing and for holding up a new sale of equipment to upgrade Taiwan’s existing F-16s.”
“The sources say he has used bureaucratic delaying tactics to block the release of a second Pentagon report to Congress on the shifting air power balance in the Taiwan Strait,” it added.
Asked to comment on the report, Rick Fisher, a senior fellow in Asian military affairs with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, said: “It is a matter of obvious public record that the Obama administration has refused to move on Taiwan’s request for new F-16s. It has not released the congressionally mandated Department of Defense reports on the Taiwan Strait air power balance or the 2011 China military power report and did not send an aircraft carrier task group into the Yellow Sea as a response to undeniable North Korean aggression in 2010. History will show that these decisions did not mollify China’s aggressive quest for power and did not reduce China’s military buildup against democratic Taiwan, but did contribute to a then-gathering impression of freedom’s decline as America retreated from an increasingly powerful Chinese dictatorship.”
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