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."
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
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