The decision to freeze the processing of a US$12 billion package of weapons sales to Taiwan appears to be a product of US President George W. Bush’s desire not to offend China at a critical time and, perhaps, a general weariness with cross-strait issues as Bush’s term comes to an end, several sources close to the matter said.
It is still not confirmed that the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) asked for the delay, since there has been no official confirmation or explanation of the delay from the Bush government and various participants have also given differing explanations of the situation.
There was early speculation that Taiwan asked for the freeze to aid cross-strait reconciliation to proceed unhampered. This was bolstered by the demand by a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman that the US end all arms sales to Taiwan, and by reports that both Ma and National Security Council Secretary-General Su Chi (蘇起) urged visiting US officials to impose the freeze.
But while Ma and Su brought up the timing of the sales in their talks, they apparently did not specifically ask for a delay, one source said.
US Assistant Secretary of Defense James Shinn added to the confusion in his testimony before Congress last month, implying that Taipei had asked for the freeze and that it had not been initiated by the US.
But Shinn may have been mistaken.
Taiwan’s Representative to the US Jason Yuan (袁健生) this week denied that Taipei had asked for a freeze. And congressional sources told the Taipei Times they had been told by administration officials that the freeze was real and was initiated by Washington.
Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the US-Taiwan business council, which represents US defense contractors among others, has claimed that the US decision to freeze sales dates back to late last year during the Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) administration.
‘HANGOVER’
Hammond-Chambers characterizes the freeze as “a hangover from the Chen Shui-bian administration.”
“The Bush administration feels, why should we do anything [for Taiwan] after all that Chen Shui-bian put us through. The fact that Ma Ying-jeou is president is absolutely incidental to them,” he said.
Underscoring the contention that the freeze is long term is the fact that the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the unit that handles foreign arms sales, has not notified Congress of a single proposed sale to Taiwan this year.
In contrast, last year the agency sent more than US$3.7 billion in notifications, including 12 P-3C aircraft, Patriot-2 anti-missile upgrades and several major batches of missiles. That was the second highest annual total ever — behind only 1992, when then president George H.W. Bush sold Taiwan 150 F-16 fighters for US$5.8 billion, with the full-year total reaching US$7.7 billion.
The likely reason for the continued freeze, Washington observers say, is that Bush is anxious to make sure his trip to Beijing in August for the opening of the Olympic Games will not be affected by any arms sales to Taiwan, which Beijing has resolutely opposed, and that China continues to cooperate in the North Korean nuclear disarmament talks.
US State Department officials linked the freeze to Taiwanese politics in a meeting with congressional staffers in early May, saying they would hold back on arms sales to “wait and see” what president-elect Ma Ying-jeou would say in his inauguration address and afterward.
One congressional attendee at the meeting with long experience in dealing with Taiwan affairs said that Taiwan did not ask for a delay.
Meanwhile, Yuan on Monday flatly denied that the Ma government had asked for a delay, citing Ma’s statements in Taipei that he was committed to a bigger arms budget and purchases of items that had been included in press reports of the sales delay.
“I can tell you very clearly the instructions [Ma] gave to me and the message he gave to the US government. He never said: ‘Delay the package,’” Yuan told the Taipei Times, after a luncheon meeting with Taiwan’s press corps, the first since the US accepted his appointment as the representative of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office.
Ma’s message was “very clear,” Yuan said.
First, he supports a defense budget at 3 percent of GDP; and second, “there is a continuity of the government,” Yuan said. “Whatever we passed, those items we passed in June and December of last year in the Legislative Yuan, those items we need immediately.”
INTERNAL PROBLEM
Any delay on the US side is “an internal problem ... and all we can do is to officially tell the US government” that it shouldn’t delay those items, Yuan said.
The freeze affects eight large weapons systems, including 30 Apache Longbow attack helicopters, 60 Black Hawk helicopters, eight diesel electric submarines, four PAC-3 air defense missile batteries and 66 F-16 fighter aircraft.
Even before Ma took over, the State Department had decided to delay the arms sales, said a source who attended a meeting between Capital Hill staffers and department officials in early May, which included State Department Taiwan desk officials.
“On arms sales,” a Washington staffer quoted a department official as saying: “We must wait and see, because the Ma administration may take a new approach to the mainland [sic], and there’s likely to be a thaw and they might really not want to go forward” with the sales.
Notwithstanding, “the real reason is Bush is going to the Olympics and China is being so helpful on North Korea, they don’t want to rock the boat, and they may be willing to kick this can down the road to the next president, which is not being received with much delight by the McCain or Obama campaigns,” the source said, referring to the presumptive presidential candidates, Democratic Senator Barack Obama and Republican Senator John McCain.
The issue was clouded last week when Shinn testified at the House Armed Services Committee and, in answer to a question about the delay, said: “I don’t believe that we made a decision to put things in abeyance. This was driven, as far as I understand, by Taiwanese domestic politics.”
That statement appeared to confirm reports in the Taiwanese press and sources in Washington that the Ma administration urged Washington to freeze the sales while Ma pursued cross-strait talks.
But, perhaps not.
“I don’t believe Mr Shinn was part of the decision-making process on the arms sales freeze,” said Hammond-Chambers, who said the issue was one which Shinn “is not aware of, a policy which he is not familiar with, nor is he participating in.”
As a result, Shinn was actually talking about the 2003 to 2007 arms stalemate in the Legislative Yuan, he said.
Asked by the Taipei Times about the issue, the Pentagon said only that his statements “stand on their own.” It has not responded to other queries.
Shinn was answering a question from Connecticut Representative Joe Courtney, whose district includes the Groton, Connecticut, shipyard of General Dynamics’ Electric Boat division.
That facility would be in a prime position for the contract to build the eight diesel-electric submarines Bush offered in April 2001, but which have been held up since then.
While committee staffers were confused by Shinn’s answer, they concluded that he was talking about the current freeze because “that is consistent with what we have been hearing” from administration officials — that the US has not imposed a freeze.
NO RESPONSE
They say that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has not yet responded to a letter sent to her on June 17 from Courtney and Representative James Langevin asking for an explanation of the freeze, focusing on the fate of the submarines.
The letter asked for a detailed explanation of the status of the submarine deal, the timeline for completion of the review and when Congress will be notified.
Noting that the Legislative Yuan approved initial funding for the subs last year, the lawmakers said that in January, Taiwan submitted a letter of request to start the sales process on the subs. The next step in the process, they wrote, is a 30-day notification of Congress.
“There is some speculation that the pause in Congressional notifications may extend through the end of the summer or even through the end of the current administration and into the next,” the congressmen wrote.
“As you are well aware, the longer it takes to begin the congressional notification process on the submarine program, the harder it will be to complete this next crucial step before the end of the current Congress,” which officially ends in January, they said.
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