Military fears link between spy plane, arms sales

Taiwan's military yesterday called on the US not to link its arms sales to Taiwan with the mid-air collision between a Chinese fighter plane and a US surveillance plane earlier this month.

"We hope that the two matters will not be linked, since it is hard to tell whether linking the two together will be good or bad for Taiwan from either a long-term or a short-term perspec-tive," said Lieutenant General Sun Tao-yu (孫韜玉), vice minister of defense.

"This is our hope. We have expressed it to the US. But in reality, the recent developments show that both the US and China seem to be complicating the simple matter of arms sales to Taiwan," Sun said.

Sun made the remarks yesterday at a press conference held at the legislature on the potential impact of the EP-3 incident upon the George W. Bush administration's considerations for the sales of advanced weapons to Taiwan this year.

"We will ask to buy only weapons systems that can serve our basic defense needs. We hope the US will give favorable consideration to us after weighing our requests against the situation we are in," Sun said.

Commenting on the same issue, Ambassador-at-large Lou I-cheng (陸以正) said: "Although both Taiwan and the US have expressed the same view on not linking together the arms sales and the EP-3 incident, the reality seems to be quite the opposite."

Lou, who also attended the press conference, said that such a link might have a negative impact upon Taiwan in the short term. "But keep in mind that nationalism also affects the US.

"The Americans generally are not happy with the way China handled the EP-3 incident. This will be good for Taiwan -- eventually," Lou said.

"Take the AEGIS-equipped destroyers. The US does not need to announce now its agreement to sell the AEGIS ships to us. It can make the announcement in a few years' time," he said. "There is no definite rule in foreign diplomacy [obliging the US to announce the sale this year]."

Meanwhile Sun confirmed media reports that Navy Commander-in-Chief Li Chieh (李傑) has just returned from a trip to the US. Sun denied, however, that there was anything special about Li's visit. "It was just a routine trip," he said.

"Li met with his US equivalent during the trip. He also stopped over at the US Pacific command in Hawaii," Sun added.

Li was reported to have made the trip to lobby US military authorities for the sale of eight submarines to Taiwan. It was reported that the US is very likely to agree to sell the submarines to Taiwan. Taiwan has been asking for them for many years.