Clinton Orders Pentagon to Delay Mission to Taiwan

In a move likely to disappoint the Taiwanese government and please Beijing, President Clinton on Wednesday said he ordered the Pentagon to postpone a long-scheduled visit to Taiwan by a team of ballistic-missile experts and other officials who planned to assess the island’s air-defense needs.

Clinton told a White House news conference that he decided to delay the mid-level military mission to avoid further inflaming tensions between Beijing and Taiwan over the latter’s recent effort to recast itself as a state on par with China.

“This is something we don’t want to see escalate,” Clinton said. He said that administration officials were en route to Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, and Beijing to urge both sides to maintain a peaceful dialogue. Early today, Taiwanese officials had no comment on the postponement.

A Pentagon spokesman said the White House quietly ordered the weeklong visit by a 12-member technical team put on hold late Saturday, only hours before the group was set to leave for Taiwan. The spokesman said the team had planned to “cover all aspects of air defense,” including missile defense.

“I didn’t think this was the best time to do something which might excite either one side or the other, and imply that a military solution is an acceptable alternative,” Clinton said when asked about his decision to delay the mission. “If you really think about what’s at stake here, it would be unthinkable.”

Clinton did not inform Chinese President Jiang Zemin of the move when he telephoned Jiang on Sunday, according to a senior administration official. To do so, the official said, would violate a long-standing U.S. pledge to Taiwan not to divulge to Beijing the island’s military aid or purchases.

U.S. officials said postponement of the Pentagon visit until later this summer reflects White House irritation with Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui. Lee stunned Washington and infuriated Beijing on July 9 when he called for “state-to-state” relations with China, which views Taiwan as a renegade province rather than a separate nation.

Lee thus repudiated the ambiguous “one China” formulation that for 50 years has allowed both the Chinese and Taiwanese governments to hold power. U.S. support for the formula, including the dispatch of U.S. warships to the Taiwan Strait when tensions last erupted in 1996, has helped keep a wary peace in one of Asia’s most dangerous flash points.

On Wednesday, Taiwan said it was shifting the wording of its new stance toward China, but it appeared to keep the message unchanged. A spokesman said the Taiwanese Cabinet had debated for days the Chinese and English phrasing of Taipei’s policy shift and had dropped some of the more controversial wording.

In his remarks, Clinton reiterated U.S. backing for the “one China” policy.

Ralph Clough, a China expert at Johns Hopkins University’s school of international studies in Washington, said the president’s comments send an unmistakable message to China and Taiwan. “It clearly puts us on the Beijing side,” he said.

But Ezra Vogel, a professor at Harvard University, disagreed. “I don’t think the U.S. is taking sides,” he said. “I do think they are concerned that Taiwan is stoking the fires. It’s a very tense and dangerous moment, and we have to work with both sides to reduce the chance of conflict.”

But Clinton may have irritated Taiwan with another remark. He pointedly compared Taiwan’s fate to that of Hong Kong, the former British colony that was returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.

Taiwan has always rejected the Hong Kong model as inappropriate for negotiations over the island’s fate. So has China, which has said it would allow Taiwan to maintain its own armed forces and keep its capitalist economic system and political freedoms in any future reconciliation.

The Pentagon team scheduled to visit Taiwan was to include officials from the Pentagon’s Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, which directs U.S. research and development of antimissile technology, as well as representatives from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defense Department’s Pacific Command. The team was to focus on countering China’s buildup of short-range missiles along its coast facing Taiwan.

Some analysts said the delay may help mend Washington’s badly frayed relations with China. Beijing froze a broad array of contacts, from port visits by U.S. warships to crucial trade talks, after U.S. forces in May bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s war against Yugoslavia.

“In Beijing, they’ll say, ‘Good news, the U.S. understands our concern and they’re willing to stand down a bit,’ ” said Bates Gill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Taiwan will understand, or should understand, that the U.S. won’t push the envelope on this.”

The Clinton announcement sets the stage for Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s scheduled meeting Sunday in Singapore with China’s foreign minister, Tang Jiaxuan, during a Pacific Rim security forum. It will be the highest-level meeting between the two countries since the embassy bombing.

White House, State Department and Pentagon officials all denied published reports that the administration also may cut arms sales or other security assistance to Taiwan.

“We’re not going to walk away from our security relationship,” a senior administration official insisted. “We wouldn’t do it, and Congress wouldn’t let us do it.”

In a separate development, the newly elected prime minister of the impoverished Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea announced that he had rejected the previous government’s plans to establish diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

Mekere Morauta said he will maintain ties with Beijing under a “one China” policy. The previous prime minister, Bill Skate, in one of his last official acts before resigning, signed a deal earlier this month to recognize Taiwan in exchange for an undisclosed amount of foreign aid from Taipei.

Times wire services contributed to this report.