The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday denied media allegation that embassies and overseas representative offices have scaled down their campaigns against China's missile buildup aimed at Taiwan.
"It's groundless to allege that our overseas offices have silently withdrawn their publicity campaigns requesting other nations to pressure China to withdraw its missile deployment targeting Taiwan," said Eugene Chien (
In a press release, the ministry said Chien, during his recent address to members of the parliament in Chad, urged the lawmakers to emulate the European Parliament and pass a resolution urging China to withdraw its missiles targeting Taiwan.
An estimated 400 such missiles are deployed along China's southeastern coast.
"The ultimate goal of our campaign to call for the withdrawal of missiles and to express our yearnings for peace is to ask China to denounce the use of forces against Taiwan," Chien said.
"These moves are to highlight Beijing's military threat as well as its unfriendly conduct toward Taiwan," he said.
The ministry's comments came in the wake of a United Daily News report that said the overseas offices have reduced their efforts to highlight Beijing's missile threat.
Meanwhile, Chien declined to comment yesterday on Chinese President Jiang Zemin's (
"We haven't heard any formal statements [from Beijing], so I decline to offer any further comment," Chien said.
Taiwan's representative to the US, Chen Chien-jen (程建人), said last month that Jiang had discussed dropping the ballistic missile deployment in exchange for the US freezing arms sales to Taipei when he met US President George W. Bush in Texas in October.
"This issue was mentioned, but was merely touched on briefly," Chen said last month when he labeled the idea "unreasonable and unfair."
The envoy also said that some US officials had privately told him that neither Washington nor Taipei would be so naive as to buy Jiang's proposal.
The US press raised the Bush-Jiang exchange again this week because of the first high-level strategic dialogue between the US and Chinese militaries since the EP-3 surveillance plane incident in April 1, 2001. Those talks were held on Monday.
The US press reported that Jiang had privately suggested to Bush that Beijing would cut back its short-range missile deployments opposite Taiwan if the US stopped selling advanced weapons to Taipei, an offer dismissed by Bush. An administration official said Jiang's offer was not a serious gesture.
"It was in the context of Jiang saying `the only reason we're deploying missiles is because of US arms sales,'" the Washington Times quoted the official as saying.
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