US Navy admiral may make unannounced go to to Taiwan, sources say
24 November, 2020
A two-star Navy admiral overseeing US military intelligence in the Asia-Pacific region has built an unannounced go to to Taiwan, two sources told Reuters about Sunday (Nov 22), in a high-level trip that could vex China.
The sources, who add a Taiwanese official acquainted with the situation, said the state was Rear Admiral Michael Studeman. The options spoke on state of anonymity.
In line with the Navy's web page, Studeman is director of the J2, which oversees intelligence, at the US military's Indo-Pacific Command.
The Pentagon declined comment, as did Taiwan's Defence Ministry. Taiwan's foreign ministry confirmed on Sunday that a US official had arrived in Taiwan but declined to supply details, saying the trip was not made public.
China, which claims democratically run Taiwan seeing that its territory, reacted with fury when US Health Secretary Alex Azar found Taipei in August, accompanied by US Undersecretary of Talk about Keith Krach found in September, mailing fighter jets near the island each time.
The Trump administration has ramped up support for Taiwan, including with different arms sales, alarming China.
It had been not immediately sharp whether Studeman's visit would be viewed as an escalation by Beijing. Still, he could be the most high-ranking US military officers known to have visited Taipei recently.
Douglas Paal, a former brain of the US representative business office in Taiwan who's right now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said: "If it's Indopacom J2 Studeman, I know of no precedent for such a good visit."
But Randall Schriver, a former assistant secretary of defence for Asia through the Trump administration, said Trump's Pentagon had been quietly sending one-star flag officers to Taiwan on a regimen basis.
He noted that america and Taiwan had close intelligence exchanges over the threat from China's military.
Bonnie Glaser, a regional reliability expert at Washington's Centre for Strategic and International Analyses think container, said it would not get unprecedented for a US flag officer to go to Taipei.
UNMARKED AIRCRAFT
The Taiwanese and US militaries have a close relationship, though rarely mention those ties in public.
Eric Sayers, who worked as an adviser to past PACOM commander Admiral Harry Harris and is now a visiting fellow at the American Business Institute, said it was his knowing that two-star officers have visited Taiwan before.
"However, the target on both sides offers been to maintain these military-to-military exchanges discreet, to allow them to continue on a regularised basis," he stated.
Taiwan's United Daily Information published pictures of a great unmarked personal jet, which it recognized to be a US military aircraft, coming to Taipei's downtown Songshan airport terminal, and what were officials waiting in its VIP terminal.
Data on the flight-tracking web-site planefinder.net showed an exclusive flight arriving from Hawaii - residence to the headquarters of the Indo-Pacific Control - into Songshan airport past due Sunday afternoon, shortly before the United Daily Information published the pictures on its website.
In a brief statement, Taiwan's Foreign Ministry explained there have been frequent interactions with america and that "we welcome the visit of the US official".
"But simply because this itinerary is not made public, predicated on mutual trust between Taiwan and america, the Foreign Ministry does not have any further explanation or perhaps comment," it added.
However, it said in another affirmation that Taiwan media information a delegation led simply by CIA chief Gina Haspel had arrived in Taiwan were untrue, and that Haspel experienced not any plans to come.
The de facto US embassy in Taipei declined to comment.
The United States, like the majority of countries, does not have any formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, but may be the democratic island's most significant international backer and supplier of arms.
Taiwan Premier Su Tseng-chang said last week the cabinet-level brain of the US Environmental Protection Company, Andrew Wheeler, will go to Taiwan. US media explained that trip is likely next month.
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