New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani met Tuesday morning with the president of Taiwan, referred afterward to the nation of 22 million people as a "remarkable country," then scoffed at Chinese reporters who heatedly asked if the mayor planned to recognize Taiwan as its own nation.
"Well, I don't get to recognize countries," an exasperated Giuliani said at a City Hall news conference after his meeting with the Taiwanese leader, Chen Shui-bian (
He said: "And the State Department said it was OK to visit with him. So, you can now go out and make a big deal out of it in some distorted way if you want. That's your job."
Giuliani's press secretary, Sunny Mindel, said that the mayor's reference to Taiwan as a country was "a manner of speaking" and not a political statement at odds with the US policy of recognizing only one Chinese government.
A State Department official shrugged off the mayor's remarks.
"Rudy Giuliani doesn't represent US policy," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Although the US does not recognize Taiwan as a country, critics of China, among them many Republicans, often refer to it as one.
Giuliani's comments, and Chen's visit to New York City, come at a delicate time in relations between Washington and Beijing.
Last month President George W. Bush seemed to upgrade relations with Taiwan when he said that the US would do "whatever it takes" to defend it, but he also said later that Taiwan should not declare independence or provoke an attack by China.
His administration later gave Chen, over angry Chinese opposition, permission to stop briefly in the US on his way to and from Latin America.
But the official position of the US government is that the visit is unofficial, even though more than two dozen members of Congress took an Air Force jet from Andrews Air Force base outside Washington on Monday evening to have dinner with Chen at the Waldorf Towers in Manhattan.
"He certainly seemed to be enjoying the fact that he had freedom of movement and that he was being treated like a world leader," said Representative Peter King. "Unlike the last time, when he was treated like he was under house arrest."
King was referring to Chen's last pass through the US, in August, when the Clinton administration sequestered him in his hotel room in Los Angeles and discouraged members of Congress from visiting him.
Still, Chen moved about the city on Tuesday as if he was a world leader under an order of silence. He held no news conferences and made no public statements. Even Giuliani was whisked into an 8am meeting with Chen without speaking to reporters who stood in a rain-drenched clump on the sidewalk.
Chen was then driven to the New York Stock Exchange, where his limousine sped by reporters waiting outside the main entrance and turned a corner to let the president in the side door. Chen was given a tour of the old and new trading floors by Richard Grasso, the exchange's chairman, who did not return a call seeking comment.
At his news conference, Giuliani, who noted that he was friendly with Chen from Chen's days as mayor of Taipei, said much of the meeting was devoted to discussions of expanding economic relationships between Taiwan and New York. Then he made the reference that caused the furor.
"Taiwan is a remarkable country when you consider the size of the country, the population, and what it's able to produce and the economy it's been able to build and grow," Giuliani said. He added that Taiwan was "a great and strong ally of the United States, and an outpost of democracy."
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 —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat
RSS