Lost In Space!
Taiwan’s President, Chen Shui-Bien, is en route to Paraguai and Costa Rica for an eight-day state visit to Latin America. For the trip, Taiwan negotiated with the US, requested an overnight stay in New York and a stop in San Francisco on return journey, but the US rejected the request and suggested to have a refuel stopping at Hawai going and a similar technical stop at Anchorage, Alaska on return trip. It was reported that the decision was made by President Bush himself , or as so advised by the Secretary of State Rice. After a fierce negotiation at the last moment, the US offered to have stopovers in Alaska on both ways. This was turn downed by Mr. Chen and the President flew westward instead of heading east. Before his departure, this decision was communicated to the US Department of State and asked to keep it under cover. For some wiered reason, the State Department called Taiwan medias one by one on Wedensday (May 3rd.) and informed them that “he” has changed “his plan” and would not make a transit stop in the US. President Chen’s plane landed at Abu Dhabi, UAE arround 6pm Taipei time yesterday for refuelling stop en route to Paraguai. The Forign Minister Hwang said that because of the early leak by the “media”, the President’s plane was refused landing at Beirut, Lebanon at the very last minuits and so the plane turned to Abu Dhabi. The latest news is that from Abu Dhabi, the plane flew north and landed in Amstadam later, instead of fly to Dominican for refuelling before arriving Paraguai, as it was expected. The medias dubbed all this “a flight that gone astray”.
The matter of fact is that this is the predicament of Taiwan at present. No government officials can visit all the countries in the world except those arround twenty small nations that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, also called the Republic of China. The People’s Republic of china, or CHINA replaced the ROC (which occupied Taiwan after the WWII but was defeated by the Communists in 1971) in the UN since 1979 and claiming Taiwan to be just a part of it’s territory and blocking Taiwan’s every move at the international scenes. The sad thing about this incident of so called “a flight that gone astray”is that, the US seems to be in cahoots with the apparent enemy of Taiwan for what ever reasons! Taiwan is struggling to be FREE, but it is a hard road to travel.