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MND says president did not reveal classified information

President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) did not reveal secret intelligence when he recently announced the number of Beijing's missiles aimed at Taiwan because the information was not classified, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said yesterday.

"China's Second Artillery Force has deployed 100 strategic guided missiles and 500-plus tactical guided missiles aimed at Taiwan," defense ministry spokesman Major General Huang Suey-sheng (黃穗生) confirmed at a regular news briefing.

Huang was responding to questions from reporters on whether Chen had illegally disclosed military intelligence when he said at a public rally on Sunday that Beijing's deployment of 496 guided missiles aimed at Taiwan was sufficient reason for a "defensive referendum" to be called on the day of the upcoming presidential election.

As the president is the armed forces' commander-in-chief, Huang said, the defense ministry is not in a position to elaborate on any of Chen's comments.

Nevertheless, Huang said China's missile deployment against Taiwan is not a military secret.

In an Oct. 8 report to the Legislative Yuan on the defense ministry's operations, Huang said, lawmakers were told that China's Second Artillery Force had deployed about 100 strategic missiles and 500-plus tactical missiles in the provinces of Guangdong, Jiangxi and Fujian which were aimed at Taiwan.

According to Huang, the Second Artillery Force is an independent military arm and does not belong to any branch of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). The Second Artillery Force now has eight regiment-level bases, manned by more than 130,000 service members, Huang said.

He further said the defense ministry has clear definitions and stringent regulations concerning military secrets and relevant intelligence of various kinds.

Article 17 of the newly passed Referendum Law (公民投票法) empowers the president to initiate a referendum on national security issues in the event of an external threat. The threat which could trigger such a poll, dubbed a "defensive referendum," is tacitly seen as coming from China.

Huang further said the MND currently has no plans to educate members of the armed forces' rank and file on referendums even though the Legislative Yuan has recently passed the referendum bill into law.

"Chukuang Day" (莒光日) -- the day regularly reserved for education in the military each week -- has not been used to give lessons about referendums, Huang said.

Huang said that even if a referendum were held tomorrow, the armed forces would maintain norms in combat training and preparedness.

He added that the defense ministry is constantly monitoring the movements of the PLA Army and that it has found that the PLA has not made any unusual moves despite Chinese officials' saber rattling over the legislature's passage of the referendum bill last Thursday.

"We have not detected any abnormal movement of Chinese troops in recent weeks," Huang said, adding that the PLA is only conducting routine training activities at the moment.

On questions of whether Chen 's advocacy recently of a "defensive" referendum has caused any alterations in military deployments on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, Huang said that this was a political issue and that he is not supposed to comment on political issues of any kind.

On another question about whether the defense ministry would go along with the notion of "barracks voting," or allowing men and women in uniform to cast their referendum ballots at the barracks, Huang said this was an issue for the Ministry of the Interior to decide, and not the defense ministry.
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