US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is slated to lead a delegation to travel to Asia tomorrow which includes Taipei as one of the stops.
The visit will be the first time in decades that Taiwan has received such a high-level US congressional leader.
The outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), however, has added uncertainty to the delegation's visit, sources said.
"Right now, everything is still on schedule," said an assistant to Senator Susan Collins, a member of the delegation, by phone on Tuesday afternoon in Washington.
"They are undecided about China," the source added.
The delegation, which includes Frist and seven other senators along with their families and staffers, is scheduled to take a US Air Force jet to Beijing and Shanghai today, before visiting South Korea, Taiwan and Japan, sources in Taipei and Washington said.
The delegation is scheduled to reach Taipei on April 18 for a whirlwind 24-hour visit.
The senators are slated to meet with high-ranking officials including President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), government sources said.
The trip, if completed, will mark the first time since 1985 a US Senate majority leader has visited Taiwan.
Then Senate majority leader Bob Dole visited Taipei in 1985 after the veteran Republican figure was elected to his post in the Senate in November of the previous year.
Officials said Frist's planned visit to Taipei should mark a significant milestone in Taipei-Washington relations.
"Despite the longstanding friendship between Taiwan and the US Congress, it's rare for us to see the visit of such a high-level US congressional leader in Taipei," said a Presidential Office official who declined to be named.
"The visit symbolizes the US emphasis on its relations with Taiwan, especially at a time when the US itself is busy with the war against Iraq, not to mention the threat from SARS," the official said.
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), which government officials said is in charge of arranging the delegation's itinerary in Taipei, did not deny nor confirm the delegation's visit yesterday.
Judith Mudd-Krijgelmans, spokesperson for AIT's Taipei office, said she could not confirm the scheduled visit to Taipei by the US congressional delegation.
A former heart and lung transplant specialist, Frist is the only physician currently serving in the US Congress.
The Harvard-educated physician joined the Senate eight years ago, representing Tennessee.
He was recently elected to replace Trent Lott, who stepped down as majority leader last December after making some comments that were taken as supporting racism.
Other key senators in the delegation include Susan Collins of Maine, who serves as the chairperson of the Senate's Government Affairs Committee and Don Nickles, who is the chairman of the Senate's Budget Committee.
BUILDUP: US General Dan Caine said Chinese military maneuvers are not routine exercises, but instead are ‘rehearsals for a forced unification’ with Taiwan China poses an increasingly aggressive threat to the US and deterring Beijing is the Pentagon’s top regional priority amid its rapid military buildup and invasion drills near Taiwan, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday. “Our pacing threat is communist China,” Hegseth told the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense during an oversight hearing with US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,” Hegseth said, adding that if it succeeds, it could derail
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
RSS