The US administration has decided to send a senior congressman as its envoy for next Thursday's inauguration of President Chen Shui-bian (
Representative James Leach, a Republican who heads the East Asian and Pacific affairs subcommittee of the House of Representatives' international relations committee, is expected to lead a delegation to the inauguration ceremony, the Presidential Office Deputy Secretary-General Joseph Wu (
"The president was very happy to learn that Leach will represent the US administration at the event in Taiwan," said Wu, who has been appointed to head the Mainland Affairs Council after the inauguration.
Wu said Chen felt that Leach, 61, has close links with President George W. Bush's administration, and his heading the group "represents the close relations between Taiwan and the United States."
Refusing to disclose the number of members in the delegation, Wu added that a staunch supporter of Taiwan, Alaska's Governor Frank Murkowski, is also scheduled to come for the inauguration.
Washington has been slow in deciding who to send for the ceremony after Chen's razor-thin victory in the March election.
Meanwhile, Leach told a Hong Kong-based television channel Thursday that he feels very heavy responsibility in being appointed head of the US delegation that will attend the inauguration ceremony.
Leach said during an interview with reporters for Phoenix Satellite TV that he might bring to the Taiwanese leadership important messages from White House -- messages that could outline the latest US policy toward Taiwan.
He declined to disclose anything further about the messages, saying that they have not yet been finalized, although he added that he will inform the Taiwanese authorities about the messages' content in advance once he has been notified by the Bush administration.
Leach said the coming four years will be a crucial period in deciding how the cross-strait issue should be settled and he admitted that uncertainty in the current situation is of great concern to the US.
He said he was very worried about the politically volatile situation across the Taiwan Strait, which is why he has urged all parties concerned to exercise the greatest possible degree of prudence at this juncture.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS