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Obama proposes his first arms sales to Taiwan

By Jim Wolf and Paul Eckert | Reuters

US President Barack Obama waves as he walks on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on 28 January 2010. The Obama administration notified the US Congress on Friday of its first proposed arms sales to Taiwan worth more than $6 billion.File photo/Reuters/Yuri Gripas/US

The Obama administration notified the US Congress on Friday of its first proposed arms sales to Taiwan, a potential $6.7 billion package bound to anger Beijing and add to rising US-China strains.

The Pentagon’s Defence Security Cooperation Agency proposed five separate sales, including 60 UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters, 114 Patriot “Advanced Capability-3” anti-missiles and a command and control enhancement knows as Multifunctional Information Distribution Systems.

The United States also would supply 12 advanced Harpoon missiles capable of both land-strike and anti-ship missions plus two refurbished Osprey-class mine-hunting ships, the security agency said in notices to Congress.

China regards self-ruled, democratic Taiwan as a wayward offshore province subject to unification with the communist-run mainland, by force if necessary.

The United States, Taiwan’s main arms supplier, is mandated under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act to aid Taiwan’s self-defence. The law was enacted when Washington switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taipei.

Senior Obama administration officials were to hold a background teleconference at 2:05 p.m.to discuss East Asian security, the State Department’s press office said, without referring to the Taiwan arms notifications.

The arms sales announcement may contribute to what is expected to be a rocky 2010 in bilateral ties. Washington and Beijing have tangled over trade, cyber hacking of the US search engine Google Inc, Tibet and human rights.

Economic relations — the main glue that has bound together the United States and its rising rival — are strained over what US critics call “mercantilist” Chinese policies designed to ramp up exports amid the global economic slowdown.

China is accused of widespread theft of US investors’ intellectual property, policies that keep its currency undervalued to make its exports cheap and promoting import substitution measures that disadvantage foreign manufacturers.

Beijing in turn has chafed at Obama administration decisions in 2009 and this year to slap tariffs on Chinese tires and steel products. Chinese state media have condemned Google for its threat to quit the Chinese market because of cyber attacks and government-mandated censorship.

China usually responds to US weapons sales to Taiwan with sharply worded diplomatic protests. Beijing underscores its anger by freezing military-to-military relations — contacts sought by Washington to build confidence and avoid accidental clashes.

China suspended military-to-military contacts with the United States after then President George W Bush notified Congress in October 2008 of plans to sell Taiwan a long-delayed arms package valued at up to $6.4 billion.

The value of the sales notified to Congress on Friday was $6.7 billion, if all options are exercised.

The notice of a potential sale is required by law and does not mean a deal has been concluded. The Pentagon said the proposed sales would serve US national, economic and security interests by backing Taiwan’s defence capabilities.

The Black Hawk, a tactical transport helicopter, is built by Sikorsky Aircraft, a unit of United Technologies Corp. The sale of 60 of them would be worth $3.1 billion, the notification said.

The PAC-3 missile is built by Lockheed Martin Corp, and Raytheon Co is the system integrator. The value of 114 of them along with radar sets and related gear was estimated by the Pentagon at $2.8 billion.

Lockheed was the prime contractor for the original “Po Sheng” (Broad Victory) programme, designed to integrate Taiwan’s air, marine, ground and command and control assets in a single network. The new command and control technology would be worth about $340 million, the Pentagon said.

Omitted from the new package was design work on diesel-electric submarines, something Bush had offered Taiwan as early as 2001. The submarine work was dropped because of a lack of consensus among Taiwanese leaders on whether to go ahead with the project, said Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the US-Taiwan Business Council, which includes arms makers.

Bush had cleared both the submarines and the Black Hawks for sale in April 2001 but skipped including them when he finally sent Congress his 2008 arms package after much debate in Taiwan’s legislative Yuan.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said in a 16 September speech that investments by countries like China in anti-ship weaponry “could threaten America’s primary way to project power and help allies in the Pacific — in particular our forward air bases and carrier strike groups.”

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