American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director William Stanton said yesterday that the US wasn’t aware that the Taiwanese government intended to seek an extended delay on the delivery of two weaponry systems from his country.
Stanton said he had not heard about the information from the country’s Ministry of National Defense and that nothing had been postponed.
Stanton, who holds a doctoral degree in English Literature and is keen on the arts, made the remarks on the sidelines of a visit to an art exhibition displaying the works of US-based Taiwanese artist Leigh Wen (鄭麗雲) and Song Sheau-ming (宋曉明) at the Huashan 1914 Creative Park.
He was asked for comment on a press release issued on Oct. 27 by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) on the issue.
According to Lin, Taiwan wants to postpone the purchase of six Patriot anti-missile batteries and 60 Black Hawk helicopters for up to three years because of budget limitations, from 2014 to 2017 and from 2016 to 2019 respectively.
The two weaponry systems were part of a US$ 6.4 billion arms package the US agreed to sell to Taiwan, which set back US-Sino relations when it was announced in January.
Lin said that the initial government decision followed a legislative committee meeting in which Minister of National Defense Kao Hua-chu (高華柱) gave lawmakers an oral presentation of the ministry’s budget plan for the next year.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift