The US State Department has denied reports that it has issued a visa to former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) to visit his alma mater, Cornell University, this spring.
A department spokesman told the Taipei Times that Lee has not applied for a visa to visit the US. The spokesman would not say what the US government's response would be if Lee did apply.
A Cornell spokesman also said she had no knowledge of any plans by Lee to visit the upper-New York State university.
University spokeswoman Linda Grace-Kobas denied a report in the Japanese press that the university is planning to build a research institute named after Lee, and had invited him there for the dedication ceremony.
She said the university is putting up a new science building but has decided to name it after another alumnus who is a "big donor" to Cornell.
Aside from that, there would be "nothing specifically significant" happening at the university this coming spring that would appear to warrant a visit by Lee, Grace-Kobas said.
The reports of Lee's travel plans and the fresh denials come just three months after another report last October that Lee was planning a trip to Cornell in December.
The new Japanese reports said that Lee cancelled the trip after he underwent minor heart surgery in November, but the Cornell spokesman said at the time that no trip had been planned.
Lee's last trip to Cornell, in 1995, caused a firestorm in Sino-US relations when the Clinton administration was forced by congressional pressure to grant a visa after initially having denied the visa application and telling Chinese representatives that Lee would not be allowed in.
That incident prompted Beijing to briefly recall its ambassador, Li Daoyu (李道豫), and initiated a prolonged chill in relations that reached a peak when China staged threatening missile exercises in the Taiwan Strait in March 1996 in the runup to Taiwan's presidential elections, which Lee won easily.
While Lee, now a private citizen, is subject to different visa rules, it is not clear whether Beijing would object to his visit to the US.
It is also not clear how the new Bush administration would respond to any such objections.
If Lee did apply for a visa and Beijing did complain, the incident would present a very early test of the Bush administration's policy toward China, Taiwan and cross-strait issues.
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