The nomination of Taiwan as a candidate for the US’ Visa Waiver Program (VWP) showed the US government has a high degree of confidence in President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tung Kuoyu (董國猷) said yesterday.
While the nomination came about mainly because Taiwan has met all the eligibility requirements for visa-free travel to the US, he added that “it was also undeniable that the progress was attributed to a high level of mutual trust between both governments.”
“No matter how much you have done, the result would not have happened without the existence of mutual trust,” Tung said at a press conference hosted by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus at the legislature.
Photo: CNA
The announcement that Taiwan has been nominated by the US Department of State as a VWP candidate, made three weeks ahead of the presidential election on Jan. 14, has sparked concerns that it could influence the KMT’s electoral outlook.
American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Acting Director Eric Madison on Thursday dismissed those concerns, saying the US judged visa waivers purely on the merits of statutory requirements rather than any other factors and that the announcement was made because Taiwan had recently fulfilled the requirements.
However, several KMT lawmakers yesterday touted the Ma administration’s achievements in winning the visa-free privilege that the US is considering and 124 countries and regions have extended to Taiwanese.
KMT Legislator Pan Wei-kang (潘維剛) said the number of countries and regions to which Taiwanese can travel without a visa remained at 54 under the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) during former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) eight-year tenure, while the number has increased to 124 under Ma.
“After the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the US has been especially cautious about entry into the country. That it would like to include Taiwan in its VWP suggests that Taiwan is a trustworthy country,” she said.
“The achievement has made our passports even more valuable and made Taiwanese more respected,” she said.
KMT Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) said the nomination was like a “cardiac stimulant needle the US injected Ma with” that gave Ma an advantage against DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in the election.
“The death of Kim Jong-il has brought about an unclear situation for North Korea. Under that situation, the US wished to see stability in Taiwan’s politics and in cross-strait relations,” Lin said.
The nomination showed that the US considers Ma to be more capable of maintaining cross-strait stability, Lin said.
Commenting on that interpretation of the VWP nomination, Edward Chen (陳一新), a professor at the Graduate Institute of the Americas at Tamkang University, said that the timing of the announcement “carried political connotations.”
“Although the US has said repeatedly that it has no preference among the two candidates, its policies have suggested otherwise. The US is still suspicious of Tsai, mainly because of her cross-strait policies,” Chen said.
The spate of visits by US high-level officials in the past three months, including US Assistant Secretary of Commerce Suresh Kumar, US Agency for International Development administrator Rajiv Shah and US Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman, the recent statement made by US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at the APEC summit and the VWP progress dispelled rumors that the US distrusted Ma owing to his conciliatory cross-strait policies, Chen said.
Joseph Wu (吳釗燮), a research fellow at the Institute of International Relations at National Chengchi University and the country’s former representative to the US in 2007 and 2008, disagreed, saying the US did not act inconsistently with its promise to maintain neutrality on Taiwan’s election.
“The AIT has said that the nomination has nothing to do with the election,” he said.
The efforts to push for the inclusion of Taiwan in the VWP stretch back to the end of 2007, with various rounds of talks held between high-ranking Taiwanese officials and their counterparts at the US Department of State, the US National Security Council and the US Department of Homeland Security before the DPP left office, Wu said.
Other than the talks, officials from both sides had inspected security and immigration facilities in the other side’s country and were close to completing negotiations on certain agreements needed to be signed to fulfill VWP requirements, he said.
Wu added that he had reservations about the comments made by Tung.
“In my view, the former DPP administration built a solid foundation,” Wu said.
“The nomination was actually a belated progress. Taiwan would have been nominated earlier if the KMT administration had worked harder,” he said.
A signaling system malfunction disrupted high-speed rail (HSR) services beginning at 8am today, with trains temporarily reduced to three northbound and three southbound trains per hour as authorities conduct inspections. The malfunction occurred on a section of track in Miaoli County during pre-operation checks early this morning, forcing northbound and southbound trains to use a single track, the HSR operator said. The regular schedule has been replaced with three hourly trains offering only nonreserved seating in each direction, stopping at every station, it said, adding that business class cars would still have reserved seating. Departures from terminal stations are scheduled at the top
Taiwan is still in the process of assessing the possibility of recruiting workers from Eswatini, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday, adding that its goal is to help Eswatini upgrade its vocational training centers. If there are plans to recruit workers from Eswatini, safeguarding national security, protecting public health and ensuring the employment rights of Taiwanese would be prerequisites, Department of West Asian and African Affairs Director-General Yen Chia-liang (顏嘉良) told a news conference. Key considerations would also include filling labor shortages in specific industries, and fostering bilateral professional and technical exchanges, he said. Yen was asked about the progress of labor
A US uncrewed surface vessel (USV) encountered multiple Chinese warships during an autonomous transit of the Taiwan Strait, US defense company Seasats said in a statement on Wednesday. Seasats announced that a Lightfish USV had completed the first autonomous transit of the Taiwan Strait. Over five days, the USV traversed the entire length of the Strait while constantly monitoring surface vessel traffic, the company said. The Lightfish encountered multiple Chinese warships, one of which was a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Type 056 corvette, it said. The Chinese vessels were operating “well within Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone without transmitting their identity via the
VERBOSE VESSELS: A CGA cutter and a China Coast Guard exchanged verbal barbs for more than a day in Taiwanese-controlled waters before the Chinese vessel left The Taiwanese and Chinese coast guards had a standoff near the strategically located Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the north of the South China Sea, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The two sides engaged in intense radio exchanges over sovereignty claims during the 33-hour standoff. China Coast Guard vessel 3501 eventually left the restricted waters, 26.6 nautical miles (49.2km) west of the Pratas Islands, at 5pm yesterday, the CGA said. Lying approximately between southern Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Taiwan-controlled Pratas are seen by some security experts as vulnerable to Chinese attack due to their distance — more than
RSS