US officials expressed their understanding of the terminology President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) decided on concerning the National Unification Council (NUC) and unification guidelines.
The US State Department was expected to make a statement in this regard during a routine press conference late yesterday and to confirm that Taiwan and the US are in sync regarding maintaining the status quo.
After several rounds of negotiations, Taiwan and the US reached a consensus over the phrasing on Saturday, after officials from the Bush administration shared their views with Taiwan's representative to Washington, David Lee, (
Derek Mitchell, a senior research fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that abolishment of the NUC had been considered an important issue to the US because Chen had pledged not to scrap it in his inauguration speeches.
The recommendation made by the National Security Council to have the NUC "cease its function" and for the guidelines to "cease to apply" did not violate Chen's pledge, nor did it touch upon issues of changing the status quo. This version was therefore deemed acceptable to both Taiwan and the US.
Mitchell said that Washington understood that the move by Chen was in reaction to Beijing's refusal to begin a dialogue with him, and that in general Washington sympathizes with the Chen administration's situation. He added that, in his view, Washington feels that Beijing should hold a dialogue with Chen without setting any preconditions.
In other developments, three Taiwanese officials have decided to cancel their "communication trips" to the US following the NUC compromise.
NSC Secretary-General Tsai Ming-hsien (
Both sides had considered the various semantic options, including "abolish," "freeze," "suspend," "discontinue" and "cease" for the NUC, and were able to smooth out differences and find both Chinese and English terms acceptable to both sides.
Promises not to scrap the NUC and the guidelines should China have no intention of using force against Taiwan are contained in Chen's "five noes" pledges.
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