The Ministry of National Defense yesterday denied a newspaper report that Chief of the General Staff General Lee Jye (
In a statement issued through its Office of the Spokesman, the ministry said that Defense Minister Tang Yao-ming (
The statement said that in a March 17 meeting, in which Lee and his three deputies were reportedly at odds with Tang about whether military personnel engaged in war-readiness duties could go to vote in the March 20 presidential election, a Legislative Yuan Judiciary Committee resolution was discussed, and it was decided that furlough regulations would not be changed. In other words, no military personnel on leave on May 20 would be kept in barracks for any reason.
The statement said the defense ministry regretted that newspapers would carry such a baseless report, adding that "they should verify their stories before printing them."
Deputy Minister of National Defense Lin Chong-pin (
The newspaper said Lee Jye offended Tang at that meeting by suggesting letting armed forces members engaged in war-preparedness duties on March 20 cast their ballots in turns as in previous elections in light of the relatively peaceful situation across the Taiwan Strait in the lead-up to the presidential election.
However, the tranquility was interrupted on March 19, the newspaper said, when President Chen Shui-bian (
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
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XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods