Senate Vote Reaffirms Ties With Taiwan

The Senate on Friday unanimously reaffirmed U.S. support for Taiwan in a vote designed to smooth feathers ruffled by President Clinton’s public statements in China last month opposing the island’s independence.

By a 92-0 vote, the Senate agreed to a nonbinding resolution noting the “long, peaceful, friendly relationship with Taiwan” and urging Clinton to seek Beijing’s renunciation of the use of force against Taiwan.

At the White House, Press Secretary Mike McCurry brushed aside concerns that the vote was a repudiation of Clinton’s remarks and said the Senate had “merely reiterated a long-standing, existing tenet of U.S. policy on the question of Taiwan.”

“There is not any new policy,” he said, noting that the Taiwanese were satisfied with the outcome of last month’s U.S.-China summit.

The resolution reaffirmed what has been U.S. policy since the Nixon administration, an unofficial relationship with the island--which believes itself to be the official seat of power for the Republic of China and which Beijing considers a renegade province.

Under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, the United States urges peaceful resolution of Taiwan’s status and pledges arms sales for its defense.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), author of the resolution and one of the harshest critics of Clinton’s China trip, accused the president of damaging ties with Taiwan.

Lott had bristled at remarks Clinton made in Shanghai in which the president publicly uttered what had been an unstated policy. “I had a chance to reiterate our Taiwan policy, which is that we don’t support independence for Taiwan, or ‘two Chinas,’ or ‘one Taiwan, one China,’ and we don’t believe that Taiwan should be a member in any organization for which statehood is a requirement,” Clinton had said.

Although Democrats did not rally to back the resolution initially, none voted against it.