The US will continue its arms sales to Taiwan in accordance with the Taiwan Relations Act to help Taiwan defend itself against any Chinese military threat, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said on Friday.
Asked about recent developments in US-China relations, Gates said during a media briefing on Iraq and Afghanistan that Chinese officials again raised the issue of US arms sales to Taiwan during his recent visit to China.
"I was very explicit that our arms sales were consistent with the Taiwan Relations Act and the joint statement and that as long as they continued to build up their forces on their side of the Taiwan Strait, we would continue to give Taiwan the resources necessary to defend itself," Gates said.
Hours after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke against Taiwan's plan to hold a referendum on applying to join the UN, Gates downplayed the significance of the referendum from his point of view, saying that passage of the poll would not provoke China to attack Taiwan militarily.
"I am not worried that there will be a military reaction" to the referendum, he said.
Gates said the US had spoken "quite clearly" on the issue to Taiwan and that Beijing "knows that we have spoken out," adding that "I think they'd [Chinese] like for us to speak out every single day."
Gates also repeated a warning he and other US officials had made to Beijing.
"I've made it pretty clear to the Chinese that they should continue to handle this matter in a political way," rather than using it as a pretext for military action against Taiwan, he said.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
UPDATED TEST: The new rules aim to assess drivers’ awareness of risky behaviors and how they respond under certain circumstances, the Highway Bureau said Driver’s license applicants who fail to yield to pedestrians at intersections or to check blind spots, or omit pointing-and-calling procedures would fail the driving test, the Highway Bureau said yesterday. The change is set to be implemented at the end of the month, and is part of the bureau’s reform of the driving portion of the test, which has been criticized for failing to assess whether drivers can operate vehicles safely. Sedan drivers would be tested regarding yielding to pedestrians and turning their heads to check blind spots, while drivers of large vehicles would be tested on their familiarity with pointing-and-calling
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