Taiwan submitted three official appeals for the purchase of 66 F-16C/D aircraft between 2006 and 2007, requests that the US government refused to accept, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said yesterday.
In November 2009, the government also made an official request for an upgrade to the air force’s 145 F-16A/Bs, one that defense experts expect to be granted this year or next year.
The official records demonstrate Taiwan’s determination to procure US-made fighter aircraft and upgrade its air force capabilities, the ministry said in a statement, which came in the wake of remarks by a US State Department official that Taiwan had yet to submit an official request for the F-16C/Ds.
In Washington on Wednesday, US-Taiwan Business Council president Rupert Hammond-Chambers pointed to a letter by Joseph Macmanus, acting assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, replying to a US senator calling for the sale of the more advanced aircraft to Taiwan.
The assistant secretary wrote that “contrary to recent media speculation, Taiwan has not to date submitted a letter of request for additional F-16C/Ds,” Hammond-Chambers said.
“That could be one of the most disingenuous things I’ve seen in a long time,” Hammond-Chambers, a long-time advocate of arms sales to Taiwan, told Taiwan Today. “The reason, of course, as many of us know, that Taiwan has not to date submitted a letter of request is that they’ve been told not to.”
Ministry spokesman Lo Shao-ho (羅紹和) said the three requests for the F-16C/Ds — in June and July 2006 and February 2007 — were “Letters of Request for Price and Availability (LOR),” a key first step that allows a government to estimate costs and begin budgeting procedures.
Although accepting Taiwan’s LOR does not require the US to sell the equipment requested, the US government said it could not accept the letters because of a lack of consensus among US government agencies, Lo said, which contrasted with the 2009 LOR for the F-16A/B upgrades, which was accepted.
Taiwanese defense officials have come under pressure from critics and opposition lawmakers to explain the lack of progress on the F-16C/D procurement and a request to buy eight diesel-electric submarines.
Democratic Progressive Party spokesperson Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) said President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration was “too timid” to issue a new LOR for the F-16C/Ds because of pressure from Beijing, adding that official requests for the new aircraft stopped after 2008.
However, the ministry said that Ma had on “18 different occasions” asked visiting US officials, the American Institute in Taiwan, international media and US-based experts to support the sale.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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