A trilateral security dialogue between the US, Japan and Taiwan to be attended by parliamentarians and academics will be held in Taipei tomorrow.
The dialogue will be the first of its kind that has been initiated by the government with two of the country’s most important allies, an official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
The one-day closed-door forum will be organized by the Taipei-based Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies in conjunction with the American think tank the Project 2049 Institute, commissioned by the ministry.
Department of North American Affairs Director-General Bruce Linghu (令狐榮達) said that the initiative showed that the government attached great importance to strengthening cooperation and partnership with other countries, particularly the US and Japan, while it tries to improve the nation’s relations with China.
For the US and Japan, the development of peace and stability in cross-strait relations has been an issue of concern because of their geographical interdependence in the Western Pacific Region, he said.
Panelists at the forum will include Republican US Representative Tom Reed and Republican US Representative Peter Roskam, Japanese Representative and Renaissance Party founder Yoichi Masuzoe, Senator Kenzo Fujisue of the Democratic Party of Japan, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators Mark Li (李明星) and Chu Fong-chi (朱鳳芝), and Mark Stokes, executive director of the Project 2049 Institute, among others.
In view of the lack of a dialogue mechanism involving the three parties, the forum could become a platform for the trio to continue discussions of their mutual interests on a regular basis, Linghu said.
During the previous Democratic Progressive Party administration, the government established a US-Japan-Taiwan Strategic Dialogue co-hosted by the US-based Heritage Foundation, the Okazaki Institute in Japan and Taiwan Thinktank, holding four rounds of dialogue in Taipei, Tokyo and Washington between 2002 and 2004.
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