President Chen Shui-bian (
The institute, which is responsible for providing educational and training programs for Foreign Service personnel from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), has moved several times since its establishment in 1969 and is now located on Dunhua South Road, bordering Dunhua-Renai intersection.
Chen said he passed the 11-story building every time when traveling to the Taipei Sungshan Airport to take Air Force One.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
"I witnessed the building's transformation from an old house to a modernized building," he said.
Taiwan's diplomacy is facing severe challenges, the president said. Recalling his recent conversation with would-be top representative to the US, David Lee (
Lee and the majority of the country's diplomats were educated and trained under the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime.
Chen said he told Lee, still a KMT member, that as a diplomat he has to serve Taiwan first rather than his party or himself. Chen and Lee talked for more than an hour on a train trip to Ilan at the end of last month.
"Lee's performance as the top representative to Brussels and the EU was brilliant. That's why I asked him to be Taiwan's top representative to the US. Lee told me he accepted the tough post because of his commitment to our nation," said Chen.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Mark Chen (
The Foreign Service Institute will formally become the Foreign Affairs Institute once the Statute of the Foreign Affairs Institute (
The MOFA began to undertake preparatory work towards the establishment of the Foreign Affairs Institute in January 2001. It joined with other government agencies in organizing a delegation to visit comparable institutes of diplomacy in the US, France, Germany, Japan and South Korea.
"I would like to urge the legislature to pass the statute as soon as possible so that the Foreign Affairs Institute can be up and running," Chen said.
The establishment of the Foreign Affairs Institute is seen as a crucial step in strengthening the country's diplomatic personnel. But the task faces a number of challenges, including a shortage of funds and difficulty in finding proper lecturers.
MOFA officials said the budget for the institute is much less than the money China and South Korea provide for their official diplomatic training agencies.
Originally known as the Foreign Service Training Institute, the Institute was first located in the Yueh Han Building at National Tsing Hua University and was relocated to the MOFA building in May 1971, at which time it assumed the title of the Foreign Service Institute.
In July 1977, the institute was again relocated, this time to the site of the former Embassy of the Philippines on Renai Road in Taipei. In October 2001, the institute temporarily moved to the Pai-shih Building on Xinhai Road Section 2 in Taipei while construction work on the Renai Road site was undertaken.
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