Key US Congressional staff members said that issues of major importance to Taiwan will continue to be pushed on Capitol Hill during this election year.
In particular, they expressed optimism for real progress and the potential passage of legislation granting visa-waiver status to Taiwan and new pressure for the country to be given meaningful participation in the International Civil Aviation Organization.
Both of these issues were raised on Thursday by Joel Starr, a senior aide to Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe.
Starr was speaking at the Heritage Foundation’s annual examination of Asia policy as seen from Capitol Hill.
He indicated that Inhofe, a ranking Republican on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, would ensure that Taiwan policy issues were not neglected.
Chris Socha, a senior aide to Republican Senator James Risch of Indiana and Edward Burrier, a staff member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, agreed with Starr that Taiwan would not be “marginalized” in US policymaking.
The three staffers, speaking as part of a panel hosted by Walter Lohman, director of Asian Studies at Heritage, also agreed that there was strong support in the US Congress for selling advanced F-16C/D aircraft to Taiwan.
US President Barack Obama last year turned down longstanding requests from Taipei to buy the fighters and instead opted to upgrade the nation’s existing fleet of aging F-16s.
Starr said that the sale should go ahead because under the Taiwan Relations Act there was a “direct legislative requirement to allow Taiwan to defend itself.”
Burrier said he understood from aviation experts that it would take longer to do the upgrades and refurbishments than it would to supply new aircraft.
He likened the deal to buying a new house compared with rebuilding an old one.
Burrier said that going to an empty plot of land and building a new house was faster than “replacing the guts” of an old one.
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
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