Taiwan says no concrete plans for a Tsai trip to U.S.
ROC Central News Agency
03/07/2023 01:07 PM
Taipei, March 7 (CNA) The Ministry of Foreign Affairs currently has "no concrete plans" for an overseas trip by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Foreign Minister Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said Tuesday, amid reports she will visit Taiwan's allies in April with stopovers in the United States.
"Head of state diplomacy is an important part of the Foreign Ministry's work and the ministry will make proper arrangements for the president's potential state visit," Wu told lawmakers in Taipei.
Before finalizing related preparations, it would be inappropriate to make public details of such a trip, Wu said when asked by a lawmaker to comment on a Financial Times report published Tuesday.
Quoting multiple sources both in Taipei and Washington, the Financial Times said Tsai will visit both California and New York in early April as part of a trip to Guatemala and Belize.
The president will meet U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California rather than Taipei to avoid an aggressive Chinese military response, as tensions run high between Beijing and Washington, according to the report.
Holding the meeting in California could keep China from engaging in even stronger military posturing toward Taiwan, sources told the newspaper.
McCarthy had previously said he wanted to follow in the footsteps of his immediate predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, who visited Taiwan in August 2022.
Her visit heightened tensions between the United States and China, with Beijing accusing Washington of promoting Taiwan independence and hollowing out its "one-China" policy and later launching a series of large-scale military drills in the vicinity of the island.
Meanwhile, Taiwan's Presidential Office said it had no comment on the Financial Times report.
In the U.S., State Department spokesman Ned Price said the State Department was not aware of any confirmed travel for President Tsai or a meeting with Speaker McCarthy.
Meanwhile, Bonnie Glaser, director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund, told CNA that she believed Taiwan had very little to gain should the new speaker visit Taipei only months after Pelosi.
"If McCarthy were to visit this year, it is likely that PLA would carry out another large display of force that could bolster the [opposition Kuomintang] KMT's narrative that the [ruling Democratic Progressive Party] DPP brings war, while the KMT brings peace. It therefore could be damaging politically in the runup to the election," she told CNA.
But she also noted that McCarthy could still visit Taiwan, perhaps after Taiwan's 2024 presidential election.
(By Stacy Hsu and Joseph Yeh)
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