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Cabinet hits back on arms delay

The Cabinet yesterday rebutted the leader of the main opposition party's charge that the government was to blame for the delay in the passage of the arms-purchase proposal.

"The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and People First Party (PFP) have repeatedly either ignored or vetoed the proposal. [The KMT and PFP lawmakers] are actually the ones who have been delaying the proposal, not us," Government Information Office (GIO) Minister and Cabinet Spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) said.

The spokesman made the remarks in response to KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) comment yesterday that the Cabinet did not submit the amended proposal to the legislature until Thursday. Ma was speaking at a seminar on national defense affairs.

Ma then said that he thought "Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) owes the public an explanation as to why the Cabinet had been delaying this proposal."

Ma said that the administration of US President George W. Bush approved the deal back in April, 2001. However, the Cabinet did not submit it, when the proposal only cost NT$610.8 billion, to the legislature until the legislative session came to an end in June 2004. When the pan-blue camp complained about the price, the Cabinet then began to try to reduce the amount.

"When we finally reached an agreement with the pan-green camp this April, we urged the Ministry of National Defense to submit the amendments as soon as possible. Unfortunately, nothing was done until now," Ma said.

Asked for a response, Cheng said yesterday that the latest version of the proposal -- a total of NT$6.3 billion -- was amended following the pan-blue camp's requests and was submitted to the legislature before it began its extraordinary session on June 13.

"I still do not understand why [pan-blue lawmakers] would do this [continue to ignore or veto the proposal] now that Chairman Ma claims they want `to protect Taiwan at all costs,'" Cheng said. "It is their problem, not ours."

A special arms procurement budget worth NT$610.8 billion -- including 384 Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles, 12 P-3C maritime patrol aircraft and eight diesel power submarines -- was proposed two years ago but has been stalled in the legislature. Opposition lawmakers complained that the cost for purchasing the weapons was too high.

The defense ministry tried to have the budget passed by amending its proposal three times -- reducing the request to NT$590 billion, then NT$480 billion and now NT$6.3 billion.
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