Five US representatives on Friday called on US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to not impose conditions on President William Lai (賴清德) should he make a stopover in US territory during his trip to the South Pacific.
The representatives also urged US President Joe Biden to “consider meeting personally with Mr Lai during his visit.”
The letter was signed by US representatives Tom Tiffany, Andy Ogles, Chris Smith, Scott Perry and Lance Gooden about a week before Lai is scheduled to make his first official overseas visit since taking office on May 20.
Photo: Reuters
Lai is to travel to the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Palau from Saturday to Dec. 6, although the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has declined to confirm whether he and his delegation would stop over in US territory.
Plans for Lai’s transit during the South Pacific trip “are still being finalized,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) told a news conference in Taipei on Friday.
In their letter, the five representatives said that Blinken should “refrain from imposing arbitrary conditions” on Lai should he make a transit stop in the US, such as restricting his interactions with journalists or limiting his ability to conduct public engagements.
No US law concerning ties with Taiwan “call for prohibitions or limitations on visits by high-ranking Taiwanese officials, including their duly elected president,” they said.
“In fact, the contrary is true: Our statutes explicitly guarantee that Taiwan’s president ‘shall be admitted’ to the US for discussions with American officials, and make it the policy of the United States to expand such high-level visits in the future,” the letter said.
They also criticized Beijing’s calls on Washington to block a potential stopover by Lai in the US as “outrageous and unacceptable,” adding that interference in US internal affairs “should be forcefully and publicly rejected.”
They were referring to comments by Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Lin Jian (林劍) at a news conference earlier this month.
Lin said that China “consistently opposes the US arrangements of such transits.”
“We urge Washington to ... not allow Lai Ching-te to transit [through the US] and not send wrong signals to Taiwan independence forces,” he said.
Despite a lack of formal diplomatic relations, Washington has allowed Taiwanese presidents to make stopovers on US soil during their trips to visit Taiwan’s diplomatic allies.
Former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) traveled to the South Pacific twice during her two four-year tenures, in 2017 and 2019. Her 2017 trip included layovers in Honolulu, Hawaii, and Guam, and her 2019 trip included a stopover in Honolulu.
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