A ruling by the Taiwan High Court last week, in which former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was found not guilty of misusing his special state affairs fund, inadvertently revealed secret diplomatic efforts by Taipei as it explained in detail how Chen spent state affairs funds to promote relations with other countries.
PRIME MINISTERS
The ruling said that Taipei in the 1990s lobbied former Japanese prime ministers Ryutaro Hashimoto and Junichiro Koizumi to support Taiwan’s efforts to attend the WTO Ministerial Conference on Agriculture — efforts that succeeded in the long run.
The Taiwan High Court on Friday rescinded previous rulings and found Chen and former first lady Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍) not guilty of corruption, in a retrial of their state affairs fund case.
STATE AFFAIRS
The court said it acquitted Chen of corruption in the case because he had spent more than the funds he received during his terms in office and spent all the money on state affairs.
These included 21 secret diplomacy programs and bonuses to his staff.
In order not to leak national secrets in the ruling, the court used codes to represent Taiwan’s secret diplomatic activities.
These included an invitation by Taiwan to an aide on public policy of former US president Bill Clinton, referred to as “M,” to visit Taiwan; an “S” program to smooth and maintain Taiwan-US communication channels; an “F” program to lobby US government officials on a regular basis; an “L” program to fund the campaign of a member of the US Congress, and “F” and “J” programs to promote diplomatic ties with Fiji and Japan respectively.
DISSIDENTS
The ruling revealed that Chen also funded two Chinese dissidents, whose names were not mentioned in the ruling.
The ruling further said that the National Security Bureau under former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) launched program “S” to strengthen unofficial cooperation channels between Taiwan, Japan and the US and handed more than NT$2.7 million annually to a Taiwanese operative who was familiar with Japanese politicians friendly to Taiwan.
COMMUNICATION
It said that the Taiwanese man had kept in touch with then-Japanese heavyweight senator Shiina Motoo, who maintained communication channels between Japan, Taiwan and the US.
The ruling added that in 2000, Chen paid NT$2 million from his state affairs fund to keep the program alive.
The ruling continued that during the Universal Exposition in Tokyo in 2006, Taiwan sought and won more than 50 exhibitions through diplomatic work with Japan.
HELP GIVEN
Furthermore, when the International Convention for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna planned to cancel Taipei’s cooperating non-member status because Taiwan was considered to be catching tuna over its quota limit, Taipei asked Mitsuhiro Miyakoshi, then Japanese vice minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, for help.
Miyakoshi stepped in and after intensive lobbying to the convention, the country was able to keep its cooperating non-member status.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS