The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday denied that one of its officials suggested to the Washington Times that President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration has reservations about a US-proposed missile defense program.
Ministry spokesperson Anna Kao (高安) said the remarks attributed to Dale Jieh (介文汲), the director-general of the ministry’s Department of Policy and Planning, in the report carried by the US newspaper, were actually made by “an academic not in a government position and he spoke for himself only.”
The academic was Huang Kwei-bo (黃奎博), an associate professor in National Chengchi University’s Department of Diplomacy and secretary-general of Taiwan’s Association of Foreign Relations.
The Times published an interview with Huang and Jieh when they were in the US last week.
According to the Times, Jieh and Huang raised concerns about US pressure to expand Taiwan’s missile defense system to detect long-range missile threats from China — as proposed by US Representative Randy Forbes — by merging the early-warning radar with the US military’s own missile defense and sensor systems.
“President Ma has been enduring so much domestic pressure. He questions: ‘Why do you need these long-range radar towers, which can detect the long-range missiles of China that won’t target Taiwan, but target other countries?’” Jieh was quoted by the newspaper as saying.
“It’s not my personal criticism, but a lot of people’s criticism in Taiwan is: ‘Hey, why do we, Taiwan, need such big radar towers that can detect the inner land of China?’ and ‘We don’t need that, actually.’ That’s what some people are asking,” Jieh was quoted as saying.
Jieh told the Taipei Times yesterday he did not make any remarks or comments on issues related to long-range radar towers during his interview.
Last night, Huang confirmed by telephone that his comments about radar towers during his interview with the paper were wrongly attributed to Jieh.
The headline of the US newspaper report that read “US missile defense plans in Taiwan face rising opposition” and “Taiwanese resist US system to detect Chinese missiles” were also wrong, Huang added.
Huang said his comments were not in response to Forbes’ proposal, but citation of concerns about the long-range early-warning radars that have been built in Taiwan as expressed by some people in Taiwan.
“I also mentioned that the Ma administration, as well as the previous Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) administration, believes that setting up the radar towers not only helps the US, but also helps Taiwan,” Huang added.
The ministry has requested a correction from the Washington Times.
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