President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday urged Washington to sell F-16 C/D fighter jets to Taiwan when he met American Institute in Taiwan Chairman Raymond Burghardt, saying the military imbalance across the Taiwan Strait was not conducive to the development of cross-strait relations.
Burghardt visited Ma at the Presidential Office yesterday to brief him on the meeting between US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) in Washington last week.
Ma said the Obama administration finalized arms sales packages to Taiwan in January and August last year, with Washington emphasizing that the decisions were made in accordance with the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and he was happy to see the US government do this.
“They also said they did not consult with China on the arms sales,” Ma said. “It is the reassurance the US authorities made after the Aug. 17 Communique [signed by the US and China] in 1982. They would not set a date for ending the arms sales, they would not hold prior consultations with mainland China, they would not play a mediation role [between Taipei and Beijing,] they would not revise the TRA nor would they alter their position regarding sovereignty over Taiwan.”
The Aug. 17 Communique was the third signed by Washington and Beijing. In it both reaffirmed statements made about Taiwan in previous communiques. Although no definitive conclusions were reached on arms sales to Taiwan, the US declared its intent to gradually decrease such sales.
Ma’s comments yesterday repeated the “Six Assurances” made by the US government in July 1982.
However, an Agence France-Press report on Jan. 29 last year quoted Obama’s national security adviser James Jones as saying that the US “will consult with China on any arms sales to Taiwan” as it places great importance on ties with Beijing
However, a CNA report on July 1 last year quoted US Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Philip Crowley as saying that Washington “will continue to make decisions on the sale of arms to Taiwan based on the TRA and does not consult with any other country on that matter.”
While Ma said he was “happy” that the US government reaffirmed the “Six Assurances” when it agreed to sell arms to Taiwan last year, four members of the US House of Representatives urged Obama to reaffirm the US security commitment to Taiwan in a letter before the Obama-Hu meeting.
At a different setting yesterday, Ma said that both sides of the Strait should refrain from resolving problems militarily.
Speaking at the Ministry of National Defense, Ma said he did not want to see yan huang zisun (炎黃子孫, or descendants of emperors Yan and Huang) resort to military action again to settle disputes.
“In fact, such a phase has already passed,” he said. “I hope the two sides can find a concrete measure to resolve issues through deeper exchanges and under the guidance of the wisdom of Chinese culture. It is the direction the Chinese nation should concertedly take.”
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,