Taiwan hopes the US will make progress on arms procurement to Taiwan next month, following the conclusion of the Beijing Olympic Games, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) said in New York on Friday.
Wang made the remarks prior to his departure for Taipei after wrapping up his nine-day US visit, which also took him to Washington.
Wang said he had held good discussions with US officials on the arms issue, which should have helped resolve US doubts about Taiwan’s determination to acquire the weapon systems.
Wang said the US side had repeatedly assured him that the administration of US President George W. Bush has not frozen arms sales to Taiwan and would comply with the provisions of the Taiwan Relations Act in handling the matter.
If the items were to be approved before the US Congress adjourns on Sept. 16, the Bush administration would have to submit notifications for the weapon systems to Congress for review by Aug. 16, midway through the Beijing Olympics, which end on Aug. 24, Wang said.
Wang said he did not believe Beijing would try to pressure the US into scrapping the deals during Bush’s visit to China to attend the opening ceremony on Friday, as the arms requests have been under discussion for a long time.
There have been reports that the Bush administration was holding back on the congressional notifications to avoid upsetting relations with China ahead of the Games.
Admiral Timothy Keating, commander of the US Pacific Command, fueled speculation during a speech last month that Washington might have frozen the screening process.
He said policy-makers in the administration had “reconciled Taiwan’s military posture, China’s current military posture and strategy that indicates there is no pressing, compelling need for, at the moment, arms sales to Taiwan.”
In response, the US Department of State said that Washington has not changed its policy on arms sales to Taiwan.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said on July 18 that the administration “faithfully implements the Taiwan Relations Act” and that there was an “internal interagency process” for the US government to consider all military exports.
Concerned about the administration’s delays in screening the pending weapon sales, a group of 23 members of the US House of Representatives sent a joint letter to Bush on Thursday urging his administration to expedite consideration of the sales.
The group, led by representatives Shelley Berkley and Steve Chabot, co-chairs of the Congressional Taiwan Caucus, requested that the administration brief Congress on the status of the sales.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods