Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday urged Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to persuade his fellow pan-blue lawmakers to support and approve the arms purchase plan from the US.
"I believe he [Ma] also realizes the importance of this proposal. I hope the pan-blue camp will stop boycotting this proposal and taking advantage of it as a political bargaining chip," Su said when approached by the press for comment.
"There is no free national defense. We have to pay something," the premier said.
Su said that to approve the arms procurement as soon as possible is the only way to maintain the nation's security at this point in time because the US is now the only country willing to sell weapons to Taiwan.
"I think he [American Institute in Taiwan Director Stephen Young] made the point," Su said. "This is a great chance for us to strengthen our own power and defend ourselves. We should not miss it."
The US is not only the country which would sell weapons to Taiwan but also the only country which would dare to challenge China by helping Taiwan maintain peace over the Taiwan Strait, he said.
"However, we must know that politics changes fast. If this deal does not work out, no one can guarantee that future American political leaders will continue to support Taiwan for future procurement deals, or whether future US presidents will be willing to help," he said. "Defending Taiwan is more important than anything. It cannot wait."
At a separate venue yesterday, Ma, on the other hand, urged the governing and opposition parties to calm down and think before acting on the country's arms purchase plan from the US.
The last thing the parties should do is "hook the arms procurement bill together with domestic political conflict," Ma said while answering media inquiries.
Ma explained that the KMT and its political ally, the People First Party (PFP), agree that there must be a "reasonable budget" for the arms package.
The opposition claims that the package is grossly overpriced and have prevented it being tabled in the legislature's defense committee more then 50 times.
Ma said it is important for Taiwan to maintain a strong national defense.
"Do not think the country doesn't need any arms purchases only because the US representative to Taiwan has said something," he added.
Taiwan should "do whatever it thinks is necessary for the country no matter what the American said" Ma added, urging the public to support a "reasonable" arms procurement package in a rational manner "for only such support can really help Taiwan's national defense."
"That is what a sovereign country should do," said Ma.
PFP Chairman James Soong (
While the US is holding its mid-term election, Soong urged Taiwan not to rush the arms purchase so as to benefit the "arms dealers from the Republican Party."
"We should make the arms sale more transparent and prevent arms dealers from trying to make a profit from it," he said in response to a press query.
Soong said the price of the arms was "very unreasonable," and urged the US to offer a more reasonable price and "not to fool people who understand the issue better like me."
During a closed-door luncheon with local officials and opinion leaders in Taitung County yesterday, President Chen Shui-bian (
Chen was also quoted as saying that his insistence on safeguarding a Taiwan-centered identity remains unchanged and that Taiwan must go its own way because Taiwan and China are "one country on each side of the Taiwan Strait.
Additional reporting by Mo Yan-chih and Ko Shu-ling
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
The US’ joint strikes with Israel on Iran dismantled a key pillar of China’s regional strategy, removing an important piece in Beijing’s potential Taiwan Strait scenario, said Zineb Riboua, a senior researcher at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Middle East Peace and Security. In an article titled: “The Iran Question Is All About China,” Riboua said that understanding the Iran issue in the context of China’s “grand strategy” is essential to fully grasp the complexity of the situation. Beijing has spent billions of dollars over the years turning Iran into a “structural strategic asset,” diverting US military resources in the
RSS