The leaders of Japan, South Korea and the US on Friday reaffirmed their commitment to maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait following a historic summit at Camp David in Maryland.
“Today, we’ve reaffirmed — all reaffirmed our shared commitment to maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” US President Joe Biden told a news conference after meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol.
The first-ever standalone summit between Biden, Kishida and Yoon focused on expanding security, economic and technology ties between the three countries.
Photo: AP
The three countries agreed to engage in annual multi-domain military exercises, improve their information sharing and boost ballistic missile defense cooperation, Biden said.
He said they would establish a communications hotline to discuss responses to threats, while the leaders also agreed to share real-time data on North Korea and to hold summits every year.
“Our countries are stronger and the world will be safer as we stand together, and I know this is a belief that all three share,” Biden said, praising the “political courage” of Kishida and Yoon in turning the page on historical animosity.
Three documents were issued after the meeting: the Commitment to Consult, the Camp David Principles and the Spirit of Camp David.
“We reaffirm the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait as an indispensable element of security and prosperity in the international community,” the latter two state.
“Recognizing that there is no change in our basic positions on Taiwan, we call for a peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues,” the Camp David Principles say, while the Spirit of Camp David reiterates the point.
In Taipei, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a news release yesterday thanked the three governments for expressing concern about the situation in the Taiwan Strait.
Taiwan remains committed to working with like-minded partners to foster peace, stability and prosperity within the region, it said.
“The purpose of our trilateral security cooperation is and will remain to promote and enhance peace and stability throughout the region,” Biden, Kishida and Yoon said in a joint statement.
Biden maintained, as have US, South Korean and Japanese officials, that the summit “was not about China,” but was focused on broader security issues.
Yet, the leaders in their concluding statement noted China’s “dangerous and aggressive” action in the South China Sea, and said they “strongly oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the waters of the Indo-Pacific.”
Yoon noted in particular the threat posed by North Korea, saying the three leaders had agreed to improve “our joint response capabilities to North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats, which have become sophisticated more than ever.”
He said as the three appeared before reporters that “today will be remembered as a historic day, where we established a firm institutional basis and commitments to the trilateral partnership.”
Japan’s Kishida said before the talks that “the fact that we, the three leaders, have got together in this way, I believe means that we are indeed making a new history as of today. The international community is at a turning point in history.”
The visitors spoke in their home languages, using translators.
Additional reporting by AFP
NO LIVERPOOL TRIP: Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, who won a gold medal in the boxing at the Paris Olympics, was embroiled in controversy about her gender at that event Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting (林郁婷) will not attend this year’s World Boxing Championships in Liverpool, England, due to a lack of response regarding her sex tests from the organizer, World Boxing. The national boxing association on Monday said that it had submitted all required tests to World Boxing, but had not received a response as of Monday, the departure day for the championships. It said the decision for Lin to skip the championships was made to protect its athletes, ensuring they would not travel to the UK without a guarantee of participation. Lin, who won a gold medal in the women’s 57kg boxing
RESPONSE: The transit sends a message that China’s alignment with other countries would not deter the West from defending freedom of navigation, an academic said Canadian frigate the Ville de Quebec and Australian guided-missile destroyer the Brisbane transited the Taiwan Strait yesterday morning, the first time the two nations have conducted a joint freedom of navigation operation. The Canadian and Australian militaries did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Ministry of National Defense declined to confirm the passage, saying only that Taiwan’s armed forces had deployed surveillance and reconnaissance assets, along with warships and combat aircraft, to safeguard security across the Strait. The two vessels were observed transiting northward along the eastern side of the Taiwan Strait’s median line, with Japan being their most likely destination,
‘NOT ALONE’: A Taiwan Strait war would disrupt global trade routes, and could spark a worldwide crisis, so a powerful US presence is needed as a deterrence, a US senator said US Senator Deb Fischer on Thursday urged her colleagues in the US Congress to deepen Washington’s cooperation with Taiwan and other Indo-Pacific partners to contain the global security threat from China. Fischer and other lawmakers recently returned from an official trip to the Indo-Pacific region, where they toured US military bases in Hawaii and Guam, and visited leaders, including President William Lai (賴清德). The trip underscored the reality that the world is undergoing turmoil, and maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific region is crucial to the security interests of the US and its partners, she said. Her visit to Taiwan demonstrated ways the
The US has revoked Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) authorization to freely ship essential gear to its main Chinese chipmaking base, potentially curtailing its production capabilities at that older-generation facility. American officials recently informed TSMC of their decision to end the Taiwanese chipmaker’s so-called validated end user (VEU) status for its Nanjing site. The action mirrors steps the US took to revoke VEU designations for China facilities owned by Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc. The waivers are set to expire in about four months. “TSMC has received notification from the US Government that our VEU authorization for TSMC Nanjing
RSS