National Security Council (NSC) Secretary-General King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) yesterday visited the National Security Bureau’s (NSB) training center in Taipei’s Dazhi (大直), reportedly to give a morale-boosting talk as part of the Hsiang Shun project.
The project is a training event that allows units involved in domestic security, such as the National Police Agency, the Coast Guard Administration, the Investigation Bureau and the Military Police Headquarters, to share their experiences in special cases to prevent the same mistakes being made by other units, as well as to increase interaction and coordination between the agencies.
However, King’s visit renewed questions about him overreaching his responsibilities as head of the council.
According to reports by the Chinese-language Apple Daily and online news site Storm Media, King arrived at the Dazhi center at about 9am.
In response to questions about whether the event had been about the Nov. 29 seven-in-one elections, the bureau said it was a routine training meeting.
King last month created controversy by making what he termed inspection visits to the Investigation Bureau on June 4, the police agency on June 6, as well as to the National Immigration Agency, the Coast Guard Administration and the military police.
Those visits were criticized by opposition legislators, as well as several Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers, who said that King was overreaching his authority.
Storm Media’s report yesterday quoted sources as saying that inviting the National Security Council secretary-general to a Hsiang Shun project event was a tradition going back several years.
Heads of governmental organizations were invited to give talks on national policies so that participants were up to date on national policy direction, the sources told Storm Media.
The National Security Bureau had invited King to give a talk to help boost the morale of those participating in yesterday’s event and he had affirmed the efforts of participants to maintain public order, the Web site’s report said.
King reportedly said he hoped the event would help law enforcement personnel become more efficient, the report said.
The primary focus of yesterday’s meeting was security fumbles during the visit of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) late last month and ways to prevent incidents where civilians overrun barricades, the report said.
Zhang was dogged by protesters during his four-day visit, many of whom had been able to repeatedly slip past security barricades.
Meanwhile, the Apple Daily report said King had met with the heads of all intelligence units yesterday to discuss public order issues and the year-end elections.
The newspaper also said that while King accompanied President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) during his state visits to El Salvador and Panama, he had not returned to Taipei with Ma.
The paper said King had left Ma’s delegation during its stopover in San Francisco and flew from there to Washington, adding that he had only returned home recently.
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