Ten members of the US Congress pledged support and assistance for Taiwan’s participation in regional economic integration and for stronger US-Taiwan economic relations during telephone conversations with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), officials said yesterday.
During a 24-hour layover in Los Angeles on his way home from Honduras, Ma spoke with 20 US politicians by phone, including former US president Bill Clinton, former secretaries of state Hillary Rodham Clinton and Condoleezza Rice and former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, members of his delegation said.
In his conversations with the 10 lawmakers, Ma expressed Taiwan’s determination and willingness to participate in the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the officials said, adding that many of the lawmakers showed support and promised to fully assist Taiwan’s bid to join the TPP.
Among the lawmakers Ma called were senators Dianne Feinstein and James Inhofe and representatives Devin Nunes, Brad Sherman and Charles Rangel, they said.
Ma returned to Taipei early yesterday after an eight-day trip that took him to Sao Tome and Principe, Burkina Faso and Honduras.
The trip solidified Taiwan’s ties and cooperation with those allies and also his policy of pursing “viable diplomacy,” Ma said after arriving at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.
The heads of state he met pledged continued support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations and their activities, he added.
Ma had a busy Lunar New Year’s Eve scheduled, including visits with the military and the police, dinner with his mother and an annual pilgrimage to a temple in New Taipei City (新北市).
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
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