The US Department of State received an advance copy of the speech delivered by President Chen Shui-bian (
The State Department soundly rejected Chinese complaints about Chen's itinerary in New York, which the Chinese Embassy registered just before Chen arrived, US government officials said.
Despite the pace-setting and highly political nature of some of Chen's remarks, US officials said that the comments were "appropriate," given that they were presented in a private setting.
PHOTO: SUNG CHIH-HSIUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Speaking about Chen's New York speech, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Eastern Asia-Pacific Randall Schriver said that "as a courtesy [Taiwanese officials] provided a copy to us in advance of the draft remark. As I understood it, he basically stuck with it, but he probably deviated from certain points."
The department did not formally review the speech for its approval, he said. "We didn't go back to them with comments or do anything like that," he said.
"Because it was a first-time event for a transit, we indicated that we thought it would be most appropriate if his remarks essentially addressed the league and the human rights issue," Schriver said, referring to the International League for Human Rights, which presented its annual Human Rights Award to Chen.
Regarding the political comments Chen made in the speech, such as the need for a new constitution, Schriver said: "In the context of basically solidifying the progress on human rights, [Chen] said something to the effect that further political reform was necessary, including addressing the Constitution."
And then he said that this would not affect in any way the pledge he had made about the "five noes."
As a result, Shriver said, he felt the comments were "a reasonable thing to do."
"We take him at his word. But I think it's reassuring to hear him repeat the inaugural pledge," Schriver said.
Schriver said the US viewed the ceremony as a private event.
"We thought it was an appropriate thing, particularly given his personal history. We were contacted by both the league and Taiwan in advance and we indicated that if it was done in a private event, because it was a transit, not a visit, we thought that would be something that we would support," Shriver said.
US officials also carefully reviewed the itinerary of the two-day trip beforehand. State Department officials "probably spent some amount of time poring over when he would speak to the press, etc. And we had confidence that the Taiwan side would honor what we agreed to in advance," he said.
"We hope he feels he was received in a manner that reflects the respect we have for him as a person, and we have an important unofficial relationship with Taiwan. There wasn't any intention to send an official signal or message through this transit. But we want to make sure that his dignity is upheld," Schriver said.
Meanwhile, at a closed-door briefing for US scholars and other interested parties in Washington, senior US officials revealed that the Chinese embassy got hold of Chen's New York itinerary and complained to the State Department, but were firmly rebuffed by department officials.
"China knew what Chen was going to be doing," one participant in the off-the-record briefing told the Taipei Times afterwards.
"They came into State with the itinerary in hand, and State said, `We've got our policy, we're going to do what we're going to do, and we're not going to change because you come marching in here and object to anything,'" the participant, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the US officials told the gathering.
The briefers, Taiwanese reporters discovered, were American Institute in Taiwan director Therese Shaheen, who accompanied Chen in New York, Shriver and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Affairs, Richard Lawless.
The participant would not identify which official had made which statement.
The officials made the point that the departments of State and Defense "are on the same page" concerning Taiwan, and there is no split in attitudes toward Taiwan between the two agencies.
The officials also reportedly said that Powell, in a speech on US-China relations in Texas on Wednesday, will say that while US-China relations are the best since President Richard Nixon's time, US-Taiwan relations are also at their best level since 1949, when Washington switched diplomatic relations from Taipei to Beijing.
"It's not a zero-sum game, and the perceived tilt toward China is not there," the US officials yesterday quoted Powell's upcoming speech as saying.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching