The administration of US President George W. Bush on Tuesday voiced its opposition to a resolution approved by the US House of Representatives that called on the administration to allow President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and other top-level Taiwan officials to visit Washington freely for discussions on matters of joint concern.
State Department spokesman Tom Casey expressed the administration's position in response to a question during his regular daily press briefing.
"There have been some moves on Capitol Hill about issues related to travel of Taiwanese officials, but they aren't matters that have been supported by the administration," Casey said.
He was referring to the "sense of Congress" resolution, approved by the House by a voice vote that went unopposed, which states that restrictions on US visits by high-level, elected and appointed Taiwanese officials be lifted and that direct high-level exchanges at the cabinet level be allowed.
The issue came up at the State Department press briefing in the wake of a new Chinese warning to the US about allowing visits by Taiwanese officials, and in light of reports of a possible US transit by Chen en route to and from Latin American allies next month.
Casey told reporters he was not aware of any travel plans by Taiwanese officials.
"When individuals are traveling from Taiwan to the United States, there's a long-standing US policy on that. I don't view that as anything that's likely to change, nor do I recall there being any particular reason why this might have come up recently," he said.
While the US has generally allowed Chen to transit through US cities in his trips to Latin America, the details have often had to be worked out after arduous negotiations.
These negotiations usually hinge on the department's attitude toward policy positions taken by Chen.
Last year, the department limited Chen to a stop in Alaska, which Chen ultimately rejected. In January he was allowed to stop in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater