At a time when the US and China are cooperating on issues such as North Korea, Iran and the South China Sea and many others, “the absence of tension [in the] Taiwan Strait has been a big lubricant to better US-China relations and [has] improved international atmosphere in this part of the world,” he said.
The “secret leak” to the Financial Times, in which a senior US official said in September that Washington mistrusts Tsai in her handling of cross-strait relations was “the private feeling of the senior administration officials generally,” Paal said.
He said the assurances Tsai gave to Washington about cross-strait management “were too vague to make Washington comfortable.”
“The US, I am sure, is trying to send a very strong signal that she has to, from the very beginning after the day of the election, not do anything to make any situation worse and try to find means to persuade China that she is not a threat to their perception of what’s required for peace and stability in the cross-strait area,” Paal said.
Paal led a group joined by James Keith, a former US envoy to Malaysia and a former deputy assistant secretary of state, and Steven Goldstein, director of the Taiwan Studies Workshop at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, to observe the elections.
At the invitation of the Prospect Foundation, a government-affiliated institute, they will also attend a closed-door forum on the situation in North East Asia on Sunday.
Paal visited the People First Party campaign office yesterday and will visit Tsai’s headquarters today and Ma’s in the morning on Election Day.
Asked about Paal’s visit, AIT spokesperson Christopher Kavanagh said Paal was a private citizen and that his remarks were his “personal views.”
“The AIT did not arrange his trip to Taiwan. We are happy to work with whoever the people of Taiwan elect. We don’t take sides in the election,” Kavanagh said.
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