Asia Times: US appoints controversial head of Taiwan mission


	April 10, 2002	atimes.com

China

US appoints controversial head of Taiwan mission

TAIPEI - Douglas H Paal, a controversial candidate for the directorship of the de facto US mission in Taiwan, was formally appointed to that post on Friday after a lengthy selection process despite having been accused of being "pro-Beijing".

Paal, who left the US government in 1993 to start a small private think-tank in Washington whose sources of funding were also a focus of criticism, was first tapped for the job at the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) last spring amid outcries from the so-called "blue team" of congressional conservatives, who questioned some of his past public comments critical of Taiwan.

In March 1998, Paal said in an interview that he would recommend to the then Bill Clinton administration that it freeze major arms sales to Taiwan, a statement that quickly attracted the attention of critics. Paal contends that his statement was taken out of context and that he was pointing out the importance of first assimilating the relatively recent purchases of F-16s and Mirage 2000s into Taiwan's armed forces before seeking other new systems.

The outspoken former National Security Council (NSC) senior director for Asian affairs under the former Bush administration also drew the flak when he said in a teleconference to Shanghai last May that US President George W Bush "misspoke" in saying that the United States would do "whatever it takes" to help Taiwan defend itself.

Apparently frustrated by the criticisms leveled against him, Paal once angrily told reporters that he was the only person invited to a particular debate with Kenneth Lieberthal on public television during which he stressed the need for the United States to provide a large quantity of weapons to Taiwan to make Beijing understand that Washington would be forced to respond should Beijing decide to handle the Taiwan Strait issue militarily. Lieberthal is well known as a pro-Beijing former NSC senior director for Asian affairs under the Clinton administration.

The post of AIT Taipei office director became vacant last September when former director Raymond Burghardt was appointed to become US ambassador to Vietnam. The AIT is a quasi-official US organization authorized to handle relations with Taiwan in the absence of formal diplomatic ties.

(Asia Pulse/CNA)