With tension increasing between the US and Taiwan this week, aides to President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and US State Department officials in Washington are close to hammering out a compromise on Chen's Lunar New Year proposal to abolish the National Unification Council.
Despite the obvious frustrations of officials on both sides -- including remarks by one Taiwanese official that State Department officials have a "narrow" mindset and are not up to the challenge that the Taiwan Strait poses -- the meetings may result in a statement of non-use of the council and unification guidelines which would mollify Washington without forcing Chen to entirely abandon his proposals.
But the limited number of meetings meant it was not immediately clear whether other parts of the Bush administration shared the anger of the State Department.
Nevertheless, the Taiwanese expressed confidence that the meetings would ease the tensions, which were sparked by Chen's suggestion that the government should consider eliminating the National Unification Council and the 1991 unification guidelines.
During the meetings, convened as the delegation attended the annual US National Prayer Breakfast, Senior Presidential Adviser Wu Li-pei (吳灃培) argued that the council's existence "sets a premise that this government's ultimate goal is to unify with China, which is not true."
Wu said Chen "promised to the people that only the 23 million Taiwan people can decide their own future. And now does he have to allow this kind of pre-conditioned entity whose [aim] is to unify to exist?"
Carrying out the three stages of unification under the guidelines also "would violate Chen's promise to the people," Wu said.
The meetings, which also included members of major Washington think tanks, may have produced a possible compromise on the competing US and Taiwanese positions on the council and guidelines, Parris Chang (
The NSC could recommend that Chen simply declare that he will not convene the unification council during this term, and that he would not invoke the guidelines.
That would reinforce the perception that the council and guidelines are "dead letters," as most people believe, without alienating Washington by eliminating them.
Such a compromise "achieves the same objective of abolishing [the unification council] without actually doing that," Chang said.
"We are going to study this and take into account the opinions of our American friends as to what they think has to be done, and we are going to come up with a formal recommendation for [Chen] to decide," he said.
The no-action alternative was "certainly one of the options we would seriously consider," he said.
Wu said that he and his group defended Chen's statements during their meeting with the State Department's East Asia policymakers. But he said that he felt "their mindset was so narrow," because they argued strongly against Chen's statements, accusing him of violating his 2000 and 2004 inaugural pledges that included not abolishing unification mechanisms.
Nevertheless, Wu said he did not think that the fuss would have a long-term impact on US-Taiwan relations.
"In [the department officials'] hearts, they do not wish to see Taiwan ceded to China. That would not meet their long-term strategy. But they don't want to pay attention [to cross-strait] issues at this stage," Wu told the Taipei Times.
"They are involved in other areas [such as Iraq and Afghanistan] and they hope this area will calm down and never have anything happen. So they don't have the will or capacity to deal with Taiwan Strait issues," he said.
One of the top officials Wu met was Clifford Hart, the head of the State Department's Taiwan coordination office.
Expressing dissatisfaction with the State Department's reaction to Chen's speech, Wu said Chen was considering only the fate of the unification council.
"I don't think that [Chen] should discuss with the United States everything he is just thinking about," Wu said.
In addition, the council has been "totally inactive" for the past six years, was not a "legal" entity and has virtually no budget, he said.
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Editorial: Nothing earth-shattering from Chen
Time to forget about the promises
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