Bush, China's Hu Discuss 'Mistake' Of Taiwan Delivery

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Philadelphia Inquirer
March 27, 2008 By Terence Hunt, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - President Bush, addressing an embarrassing flap that has strained U.S.-China relations, told Chinese President Hu Jintao yesterday that the shipment of nuclear missile fuses to Taiwan was a mistake.
The president's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said the matter came up when Bush called Hu.
"It came up very briefly," Hadley told reporters. "Basically, the president indicated that a mistake had been made. There was very little discussion about it."
The U.S. military's mistaken delivery to Taiwan of electrical fuses for an intercontinental ballistic missile has raised concerns over U.S.-China ties. It has also triggered a broad investigation into the security of Pentagon weapons.
Adding to the Pentagon's embarrassment, Wu Wei-rong, director-general of Taiwan's armaments bureau, said yesterday that the United States originally asked Taiwan to dispose of the missile fuses, before realizing the sensitivity of the technology involved.
China strongly protested the mistaken delivery. In a statement posted yesterday on the Foreign Ministry's Web site, spokesman Qin Gang said China sent a protest to Washington expressing "strong displeasure."
"We . . . demand the U.S. side thoroughly investigate this matter" and report to China in a timely manner the details of the situation and "eliminate the negative effects and disastrous consequences created by this incident," Qin said.
Qin reiterated China's long-standing demand that the United States halt all weapons sales and military-to-military contacts with Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing has claimed as its own since the sides split amid civil war in 1949.
Ending those practices would help Washington "avoid damaging peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and the healthy development of China-U.S. relations," Qin said.
U.S. officials moved quickly to mollify Beijing over the mix-up in which the Pentagon mistakenly sent four cone-shaped fuses to Taiwan in August 2006, instead of helicopter batteries ordered by the island's military.
The fuses, for use in Minuteman strategic missiles, are linked to the triggering mechanisms of nuclear warheads, but contain no nuclear materials themselves. The fuses were returned after the foul-up was realized late last week, and an investigation headed by Navy Adm. Kirkland H. Donald was ordered.
It was the second nuclear-related mistake announced by the U.S. military in recent months. In August, an Air Force B-52 bomber was wrongly armed with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles at a base in North Dakota and then flown to Louisiana. Its crew was not aware nuclear arms were aboard.
Ryan Henry, the No. 2 policy official in Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates' office, called the mistaken shipment of the fuses to Taiwan intolerable and said Bush as well as Chinese leaders were informed of the matter once it was discovered.
 
Back
Top