Cornell University said yesterday that it had no knowledge that former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) was planning a visit to his alma mater.
University spokeswoman Linda Grace-Kobas told the Taipei Times that the upstate New York university, where Lee received his PhD in 1968, had a standing invitation to Lee to visit whenever he wants, but knew of no plans for him to visit in December.
She also denied knowledge of any fundraising activity planned to take place at that time, which Lee might attend.
Media reports in Taiwan earlier this week claimed that Lee intended to visit Cornell in December for a fundraising event and that Cornell had sent an emissary to Taiwan to invite him.
The US State Department also denied any knowledge of the trip. All a department spokesman would say is there had as yet been no application for a visa.
Grace-Kobas said that Cornell has not sent any special representative to Taiwan to arrange such a visit.
She also said that the school would be empty as it will be closed for the second half of December, between final exams and New Year.
If Lee did travel to the US in December to visit his old university, it would be the first such trip for the former president since a dramatic visit in 1995, when the Clinton administration was forced to give him a visa to visit Cornell at the insistence of Congress.
The administration initially denied him a visit in deference to Beijing's bellicose protestations of the US intervening in its "domestic" affairs.
In the wake of the visa, Beijing recalled its ambassador from Washington and US-China relations took a sharp turn for the worse.
Mounting tensions culminated the following year when China staged threatening missile exercises in the Taiwan Strait during Taiwan's presidential elections in an effort to intimidate the island and influence the election.
Beijing's efforts backfired with Lee's election victory.
Lee has also been wanting to travel to Kobe, Japan, where he attended undergraduate school, to deliver a lecture at his alma mater.
Lee was rumored to have made an application for a visa to visit his undergraduate alma mater in Kobe, Japan but a spokesperson for Lee refuted the rumors saying the former president never applied for the visa.
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