Although speculation is rife over who will replace Chen Chien-jen (
Sun made the comments after wrapping up his trip to Washington last week, where he met with officials from the US National Security Council, the State Department and the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT).
AIT Chairwoman Therese Shaheen's departure was the "final blow" in a series of recent diplomatic rows with the US, Sun said.
"Shaheen's resignation is very regrettable. She has really been very nice to Taiwan and often spoke up for the country," said Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Hsiao Bi-khim (
But Shaheen's resignation was not the main reason behind Minister of Foreign Affairs Eugene Chien's (
The country's recent diplomatic rows with the US partly led to Chien's decision to leave. Sun said Chien once admitted that it was "very painful" to deal with rifts in Taiwan-US relations caused by Chen Shui-bian's referendum proposal.
In a briefing in December on how the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington handled the referendum, Sun said, Chen Chien-jen had noted that Taiwan had no communication problem with the US.
"But US officials said they have `disagreement' problems with Taiwan," Sun said.
The Presidential Office and the National Security Council are the real decision makers behind the country's diplomatic policies -- the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is only the body that has to execute these policies, Sun said.
Chen Shui-bian's "fire-fighting and collision diplomacy" simply did not work and was "doomed to fail," Sun said, adding that Chen Chien-jen, a loyal diplomat to Taiwan, found that he could not achieve what the president wanted.
According to Sun, the president's diplomatic policy defeated even Chen Chien-jen, who has decades of experience in the US and has built very good personal connections with US officials.
Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Michael Kau (高英茂) said Taiwan's top representative to the US needs to have good communication skills. The person must have good personal connections and be very clear about Taiwan's internal policies and stance.
"Being eloquent is not enough. The person has to be able to calmly listen to what other people say. Apart from professional knowledge and personal connections, the person's character is also very important," Kau said.
"The top representative must be a person whom both President Chen and the US can trust," he added.
Mainland Affairs Council Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has been mentioned as the most likely candidate to succeed Chen Chien-jen, but Tsai has so far made no comment about whether she wants the job.
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:
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