Washington, March 16 (CNA) Admiral Dennis Blair, commander of the US Pacific Command, said on Thursday that the security situation across the Taiwan Strait is a troubling development in Asia.
Delivering a speech on security issues in the Pacific at a conference of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Blair said security situations in Asia, including mainland China's buildup of missiles against Taiwan and North Korea's efforts to develop missiles, are presently troubling.
Although mainland China's missiles are now only terror weapons -- they are too inaccurate to hit military targets with any confidence -- Blair said they will pose a military threat to Taiwan as the numbers increase and as their accuracy improves.
Currently, mainland China has about 200 ballistic missiles which can reach Taiwan, and is adding about 50 missiles per year, he noted.
For Taiwan's part, the island is increasingly concerned about mainland China's missile buildup and is pressing for defense, prompting the mainland to build more missiles, Blair added, warning that, however, these policies will increase both the cost of the armed forces and the consequences of strategic miscalculation, without providing greater clout or greater security.
The admiral also described the release of a white paper issued by Beijing last month linking the use of force against Taiwan with a time table as "a step in the wrong direction."
"It creates self-pressure for aggressive actions, inhibits peaceful resolution of the differences between authorities on both sides of the (Taiwan) Strait, and I told Chinese leaders as much when I visited there a couple of weeks ago..." he said. (By Jay Chen and Flor Wang)
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