Thu, Aug 12, 2004 page3

• Error at US airport due to plain ignorance, Lee says

  • By Charles Snyder / STAFF REPORTER IN WASHINGTON
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  Taiwan's new top representative to Washington, David Lee (李大維), says the reason he was fingerprinted and photographed when he arrived at Washington's Dulles Airport last month can be attributed to ignorance of procedures by low-level bureaucrats in the airport's security system.

  In his first full-fledged press conference with the Taiwanese media in Washington since taking up his post on July 23, Lee also said he hopes that final arrangements for President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) transit visit to the US at the end of this month can be made later this week.

  He also expressed the opinion that US policy toward Taiwan would not change much if Senator John Kerry wins the presidency over current President George W. Bush in November.

  Lee dismissed his treatment at Dulles as a problem of "implementation by the lower echelon of US government bureaucrats at the airport."

  Most Taiwanese officials arrive using West Coast or New York airports, where security officials are more competent in dealing with incoming Taiwanese. In Washington, by contrast, security officials are not familiar with the E-1 type visa Lee was traveling on, Lee explained.

  That visa, issued to Lee and other Taiwanese officials, does not necessarily grant them diplomatic immunity, but an agreement signed by Washington and Taipei in 1980 grants some diplomatic privileges to Taiwan's officials visiting the US.

  Lee, the chief of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, said that "high-ranking officials" from the administration apologized and he accepted that.

  "They didn't do anything impolite to me at the airport, and I understand it is an information problem," he said.

  Regarding Chen's upcoming transit, Lee said he is still working with US officials on the details of choosing the two cities that Chen will be allowed to land in during his trip to and from Latin America.

  "I hope we can get it done this week, because time is really running short," he said.

  He would not comment on reports that the Chen administration requested transit sites on the east coast, including New York, Baltimore and Boston, but that those were vetoed by the Bush administration.

  He said only regarding New York that "I don't think that is our plan. We never requested to go to New York."

  Lee indicated that Chen would not be allowed to conduct any public activities during his transit. "That is not our request," Lee said.

  Last year, Chen raised hackles in Washington and Beijing when he received a widely publicize human rights award in New York, during which he made a public speech and conducted other public events.

  Those events were in stark contrast to the previous rules that banned Chen from saying or doing anything publicly while in the US.

  That earlier rule was so strictly enforced that a leading conservative congressman, Representative Dana Rohrabacher, was forced to sneak in through a kitchen to speak to Chen in his hotel room during an earlier transit in Los Angeles.

  Regarding the presidential election, Lee said that a Kerry administration would not treat Taiwan much differently than Bush has.

  "We have many friends on the Democratic side, and certainly now we are working with the Republican administration," he said. "In the past 18 days, I've already touched base with people from both camps," he said. "I think there is a bipartisan foreign policy approach vis-a-vis the relationship with Taiwan and China, because that has been the policy since 1971."

  "We have seen some evolution of the policy, but in general this is an American policy, the so-called American `one China' policy, the so-called three communiques and the Taiwan Relations Act, which serves as the cornerstone of the relationship," he said.

  Lee also played down the fact that both the Democratic campaign platform and Bush on Monday neglected to mention the Taiwan Relations Act as part of their Taiwan policy.

  He said that Bush's comments were "not a prepared Q and A."

  He said he didn't think the Democratic document was a deliberate omission

  "We would rather consider this a shortened version of the Democratic platform," Lee said.

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