Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

Wikileaks revelations not necessarily true: defense minister

ROC Central News Agency

2010/12/01 15:45:20

By Emmanuelle Tzeng and Y.F. Low

Taipei, Dec. 1 (CNA) Defense Minister Kao Hua-chu said Wednesday that Taiwan-related information obtained by the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks was not necessarily true.

The ministry has kept track of the classified documents unveiled by the website and has confirmed that none of them were leaked from Taiwan, Kao said during a hearing of the Legislative Yuan's Foreign and National Defense Committee.

He said a special task force headed by Vice Minister Andrew Yang would follow future leaks by the website and analyze and verify any details that were related to Taiwan.

Wikileaks announced on its website that over the next few months, it will release in stages 251,287 cables originating from 274 U.S. embassies between Dec. 28, 1966 to Feb. 28, 2010.

Among them, there are 3,456 that were sent between the U.S. State Department and the American Institute in Taiwan -- the de facto U.S. representative office in Taiwan.

Taiwan was also mentioned in some of the documents that have already been released. One of the documents showed that China opposed the U.S. sale of Black Hawk helicopters and F-16 C/D fighters to Taiwan, and also opposed Taiwan's sale or rent of SuperCobra AH-1W helicopters to Turkey.

Commenting on the information, Kao said that although Beijing has openly opposed U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, the government was confident it could still procure weapons from the U.S.

As to the helicopter deal with Turkey, the minister said this was the first time he had heard of the matter.

Even if the United States requested Taiwan to sell or rent the AH-1W helicopters to Turkey, Taiwan would not have agreed to it because the helicopters were needed to meet its own defense requirements, Kao said.