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U.S. SUGGESTS TAIWAN RAISE DEFENSE BUDGET TO 3.5% OF GDP: PAPER

ROC Central News Agency

2005-09-13 18:25:42

    Tokyo, Sept. 13 (CNA) The United States has suggested that Taiwan raise its defense budget to 3.5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) to prevent the cross-Taiwan Strait military balance from tilting further in favor of China, a Japanese economic daily reported Tuesday.

    The Nihon Keizai Shimbun quoted unidentified sources familiar with Taiwan-U.S. military exchanges as saying that U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had conveyed the message to senior Taiwan military officers during a meeting in the United States earlier this summer.

    Quoting data collected by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the newspaper said in a Washington-datelined dispatch that Taiwan's 2004 military spending accounted for about 2.6 percent of its GDP, far lower than China's ratio of 4.3 percent. The U.S. defense spending ratio is about 3.5 percent of its GDP.

    The report said the United States has on many occasions pushed Taiwan to accelerate its military modernization, but added that it is unusual for the United States to suggest a concrete figure by which it thinks Taiwan should increase its defense spending. This, the paper claimed, mainly reflects rising U.S. concern about the growing imbalance in military strength on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.

    To meet Taiwan's defense needs, the United States agreed in 2001 to sell a robust package of weapons to Taiwan, including eight diesel-electric submarines, six Patriot PAC III anti-missile batteries and a squadron of 12 P-3C anti-submarine aircraft. The deal, however, has so far not been struck because of a boycott by Taiwan's opposition "pan-blue alliance" that holds a slim majority in the legislature.

    In July, the United States unveiled an annual report on China's military power that expressed apprehension about the rapid increase in the number of ballistic missiles deployed by China against Taiwan. The number of Chinese missiles targeting at Taiwan has been increased at a rate of about 100 annually in recent years. American military experts said that if Taiwan fails to beef up its defense capabilities, the cross-strait military imbalance will widen substantially.

(By Mike Chang and Sofia Wu)

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