The possibility that US President George W. Bush’s administration will agree to any arms sales to Taiwan has shrunk precipitously over the past week, but administration officials still contend that the arms sales freeze that has been in effect all year could be lifted by the time a new US government is installed in January.
If the sales do go through, Taiwan will likely have to thank the financial crisis that has spread from Wall Street across the globe.
Before any sales can be concluded, the US government needs the concurrence of Congress, which is scheduled to adjourn on Friday. However, congressional leaders now say they may have to keep Congress in session to deal with the financial meltdown and call a special session after the November presidential and congressional elections.
If the sales were to go through, it would have to be during those extended days in session.
According to congressional sources, the Bush administration has not even begun the preliminary discussions needed before the administration can officially notify Congress of the US$12 billion in arms sales that are being held up by the freeze. They say it would be virtually impossible to get through all the needed steps in time by Friday.
The administration has been very secretive on the issue, and sources say the decision appears to rest with Bush himself. There have been reports lately that Bush has recently made the decision not to sell the arms, but this could not be confirmed.
Asked by Taiwanese reporters on Thursday, Dennis Wilder, the top presidential adviser for East Asia in the National Security Council, refused to say anything about the arms sales, other than saying the sales were “still possible” by January.
Publicly, officials said only that the sales were going through an “interagency process,” as phrased by the State Department, and that the US was still committed to providing arms to Taiwan as called for in the Taiwan Relations Act.
Speaking in Hong Kong on Wednesday before the city’s American Chamber of Commerce, US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said only that “there have been [arms] sales in the past and there may well be in the future,” a statement that some backers of the arms sales described as “less than reassuring.”
On Thursday, one top US official said in Washington that the sales were “in the deliberation process, and when we are ready we will announce a decision.”
However, US-Taiwan Business Council president Rupert Hammond-Chambers, who tracks the arms sales closely, said: “Things have definitely gone quiet in the past week to 10 days,” as far as information from the administration was concerned.
“Up to that point, it still looked like they were going to get something done this week” on the arms sales, he said.
Hammond-Chambers, whose organization represents the US defense industry, which would build the weapons systems for Taiwan, nevertheless said he remained optimistic.
“I just cannot comprehend what legitimate reason [the administration] would have to not submit notifications for programs they have that the president has already agreed to sell Taiwan. I just cannot conceive of why they would not do it,” he told the Taipei Times.
Congressional staffers, who would be deep in discussion with the administration by now if the administration were serious about unfreezing the arms package, said that they had not heard from the State Department or Pentagon officials who would normally negotiate any agreement before the official congressional notification could be delivered.
Both those staffers and spokesmen for the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), the Pentagon agency that handles the sales, said that intense and lengthy consultation with Congress had to continue before the official notification would be delivered. By then, all issues are normally ironed out, and approval is virtually automatic.
This is the way it works:
The administration first sends the House and Senate armed services committees, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee a draft notification for “pre-consultation” between the two sides. If there is no objection, the administration sends an informal notification, which initiates a 20-day final consultation period.
At the end of the period, the administration can send the formal notification, which gives Congress 30 days to reject or accept the sale.
However, if both sides agree, the 20-day consultation can be waived and the official notification can be sent immediately. Then, approval is virtually automatic, and the planned sale is publicly announced by the DSCA.
It is generally agreed that the notification must be sent while Congress is in session to allow the lawmakers a chance to reject the sales. If Congress adjourns next Friday sine die (a Latin phrase meaning “indefinitely”), such an adjournment would signal an end to the 110th Congress, and no sale would be possible.
That would leave it up to the new US president elected in November, and most observers in the US feel that would delay the sales even further.
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