President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday the government’s policy on procuring weapons from the US remained unchanged, adding that the US should explain to its Congress Taiwan’s stance in that regard to allow the matter to clear the congressional floor and proceed forward.
Ma made the remarks after being asked for comment on a story published in the Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday that claimed White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley had called National Security Council Secretary-General Su Chi (蘇起) to inform him of the Bush administration’s decision to freeze arms sales to Taiwan and request that Taipei avoid any comments on the matter.
Dismissing the report, Ma said he had often stated the need for Taiwan to acquire defensive weapons. Saying the legislature had already passed the budgets, Ma added he hoped the arms procurement “would go as originally planned.”
Su yesterday also denied he had received a call from the White House. Su issued the denial through Presidential Office spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦).
Various sources in the US — including the Senate and the US-Taiwan Business Council — have recently expressed concern about a possible freeze on arms sales.
In a statement released on June 11, US-Taiwan Business Council president Rupert Hammond-Chambers said that the US Department of State was sitting on congressional notifications related to a number of weapons systems requested by Taiwan.
In a joint letter sent on June 30 by a group of 14 senators to US President George W. Bush, the senators said they had made fruitless attempts to clarify the status of these requests and urged the administration to “expeditiously execute consideration of these requests.”
Asked about the issue on Friday in Washington, Tan Chih-lung (淡志隆), chief of Taiwan’s military delegation to the US, said eight congressional notifications were pending at the Department of State and that whether the arms procurements could be completed before Bush’s term ends remained uncertain.
Tan said his delegation in Washington had told the US that the budgets for the eight bills had been approved by the legislature and that it hoped the US would pass the bills as soon as possible.
Asked about a Washington Post report claiming that Taiwanese national security officials had asked Washington to temporarily halt arms sales to Taiwan, Tan said he did not know where this information came from.
Since the legislature has already passed the budget, Taiwan has made a commitment to the purchases, he said.
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