US and EU officials will meet next week to initiate a strategic dialogue on Asia that will center on the EU's efforts to lift its arms embargo on China, the impact on Taiwan, and American efforts to block the EU action, US Undersecretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns announced in Washington on Thursday.
Burns disclosed the plans for the dialogue at a joint hearing of the House International Relations Committee and the House Arms Services Committee on the arms embargo issue. The hearing came amid strong congressional concern over the implications of lifting the ban for Taiwan and for the US strategic position in East Asia.
The Europeans have been pushing for a strategic dialogue since early this year in response to fervent opposition by Washington to Europe's plan to expand arms sales to Beijing. An EU delegation to Washington last month received a favorable response from US officials to their proposal for a strategic dialogue, and Burns, speaking in London last week, signaled the Bush administration's acceptance of the idea.
He repeated that during Thursday's hearing.
"What is now abundantly clear is that there is a great need to undertake a strategic dialogue with the EU on this issue [the embargo]," Burns said.
"And we will soon begin, in fact next week, a dialogue with the European Union where we will describe our interests in the United States of America as the guarantor of peace and security in Asia and the Pacific region, and in the Straits of Taiwan itself. And that strategic dialogue is long overdue, the EU has agreed to have it, and we think it might assist in resolving this dispute," Burns said.
"This will not be a negotiation over terms for lifting the embargo, but a means of ensuring, among other goals, that EU members understand the real dangers to regional security that lifting the embargo would pose," he said.
Burns reiterated US concerns that lifting the embargo would affect regional stability and hurt US security interests, and send the wrong signal in view of China's "Anti-Secession" Law.
Citing President George W. Bush's statement in February in Brussels that a transfer of technology to China would change the balance of relations between China and Taiwan, Burns said, "lifting the embargo now could also be seen as an endorsement of China's recent anti-secession legislation."
Later, he said the Anti-Secession Law had "backfired" on China by prompting Europe to reconsider its decision to lift the arms embargo, and bolstering the impact of American objections to the lifting.
Burns also echoed administration complaints about a lack of progress in China's human rights record.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS