The 2001 Joint Conference of the ROC-USA and US-ROC Business Councils (中美工商聯合會), scheduled to be held in Boston Sept. 17 to 19, has been canceled for safety reasons in the wake of Tuesday's terror attacks in the US, sources from the US-ROC Business Council said Wednesday.
In consideration of the safety of the more than 500 government officials, lawmakers, and business and industrial heavyweights from Taiwan and the US who were scheduled to take part in the annual event, the US-ROC Business Council decided to call off the meeting after consulting with officials from the ROC-USA Business Council, said an official from the US-ROC Business Council.
Frank Carlucci, chairman of the US-ROC Business Council, said he is deeply disappointed with the development, especially after both business councils spent so much time and effort preparing for the annual conference.
Noting the seriousness of the current safety situation in the US after the deadly attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington Carlucci told his counterpart in Taipei, Wang Chung-yu (
This marks the first time ever that the annual Joint Conference of the ROC-USA and US-ROC Business Councils, an important mechanism helping foster bilateral business and industrial exchanges between the US and Taiwan, has been canceled since its inception 25 years ago.
Meanwhile, Taiwan's Minister of Economic Affairs, Lin Hsin-yi (林信義), who was previously scheduled to leave for the US Sunday to take part in a series of trade-promotion activities, was forced to cancel his plans in the wake of the apparently coordinated terrorist attacks that brought down the symbol of America's financial power and caused catastrophic damage to a portion of the building that houses the US military's nerve center.
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