Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday dismissed as misinformation media reports that he had been invited by a US expert to visit think tanks in Washington during a trip to the US in March.
Ko said that his administrative team never said it had received an invitation from Bonnie Glaser, a senior adviser for Asia and director of the China Power Project at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
“This is typical fake news,” Ko said. “I only said we will go to the US in March. That’s it, no more.”
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Ko’s remark followed a statement released a day earlier by Glaser, in which she denied having invited him.
Chinese-language online news outlet Up Media on Friday last week reported that Glaser, leading a group of CSIS members, visited Ko at Taipei City Hall last month and that during the meeting, the two agreed that Ko would visit the institute and hold a closed-door event during the March trip.
On Monday, the Chinese-language China Times said that it was Glaser who invited Ko.
In a statement e-mailed to the Central News Agency, Glaser said that the Up Media report and those following it contained “inaccurate information and in my view are trying to portray me as supporting Ko’s bid for the presidency.”
A proposal to visit Washington think tanks was made by a staff member in Ko’s office, Glaser said.
The staff member had approached a leading US expert at one of the major think tanks, which Glaser said was not CSIS, weeks before their visit to Taiwan.
The US expert, whose name was not divulged, “offered to hold a closed-door meeting with US scholars for Ko during his planned March trip to the United States,” Glaser said.
“Later, the expert and I discussed the proposed event and I agreed to cohost it,” Glaser said, adding that “the event will not be held at CSIS.”
It was obvious that “members of Ko’s staff decided to distort the facts so that it would appear that not only I, but also CSIS, where I work, are supporting his presidency,” she said.
“I strongly object to being used in this way... I am not picking sides in the upcoming elections,” she added.
Taipei City Government spokesman Liu Yi-ting (劉奕霆) on Sunday last week confirmed that Ko would visit the US in March, but the exact date and itinerary have not yet been settled.
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