The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) on Friday declined to comment on a WikiLeaks report of a free trip to Taiwan offered to campaign team members of Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“We will not comment on information from unidentified sources on the Internet,” the ministry said.
According to the report, Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta met with Shen Lyu-shun (沈呂巡), who at the time was Taiwan’s representative to the US, in August last year.
After the meeting, Podesta mentioned that he would send former US senator Thomas Daschle, who was planning to visit Taiwan in November that year, some names of people from the campaign team who “might like a free trip,” according to WikiLeaks.
The information showed the exchanges of e-mails and arrangements for the meeting were made through the Daschle Group, a lobbying company in Washington founded by Daschle.
Daschle was a senator from South Carolina, and the majority leader in the US Senate at the time.
During the Democratic National Convention in July this year, he spoke firmly of his support for Taiwan.
WikiLeaks has recently released several batches of Podesta’s e-mails, and Clinton’s campaign camp has said that this was an attempt by Russia to sway the presidential election, but has declined to confirm the authenticity of the content.
Meanwhile, Shen said he did indeed meet with Podesta, but only to exchange views on Taiwan-US relations.
“We had talks on major issues,” Shen said, adding they would not have bothered talking about trifling matters such as free trips.
He said that his responsibility as a representative to the US was to make sure major US political figures did not hear only China’s voice, and to promote Taiwan’s importance.
He said he mentioned that Taiwan has surpassed India to become the ninth-largest trading partner of the US, which impressed Daschle.
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