The US State Department’s latest annual guideline on contacts between US and Taiwanese officials offered nothing new, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday, refuting criticisms that the guideline was more restrictive than ever.
“The same guideline is circulated around the same time each year to all the foreign embassies and US government posts. It was nothing new,” ministry spokesman Henry Chen (陳銘政) said, adding that Taiwan has suggested Washington stop repeating the same gesture each year to avoid misunderstandings.
“Some people, when they hear there is a new guideline, they might misinterpret that the US has adopted new policies on Taiwan, which is not the case,” he said.
The guidelines are a set of prohibitions issued to all US officials to limit bilateral interactions with their Taiwanese counterparts because Washington has only maintains unofficial relations with Taiwan since 1979. The guideline bars any US official from writing personal thank-you notes to a Taiwanese official unless written on plain paper and using plain envelops to disguise the sender’s official identity.
Some critics have said that the wording in the 2008 guideline released last week imposed stricter restrictions on visits between Taiwan and US officials.
The new guideline specifically bars the display of the Republic of China flag on US premises, a condition not listed in the 2001 guideline, critics said.
Lawrence Walker, a press officer at the American Institute in Taiwan, in a telephone interview with the Taipei Times, said that the latest guidance offers no new insights to the US’ long-standing position on Taiwan and that Washington will continue to maintain an unofficial relationship with Taipei under the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) framework.
“The US has not changed its policy towards Taiwan. The TRA offers the overall legal framework for the US’ unofficial relations with Taiwan and under this framework, the State Department [for many years] releases an annual guideline on how to conduct those unofficial relations,” he said.
Walker said some minor modifications could be added or subtracted to the guidelines, but the overall context remains the same year after year.
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