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| Kissinger Watch #7 - 08 | |
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| Kissinger transcripts show betrayal of Taiwan | |
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| Taiwan Communiqué http://www.taiwandc.org/twcom/101-no2.htm | |
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| In a peculiar time warp, at the end of February 2002 there was a dark flashback to the early 1970s when Mr. Kissinger tried to trade away the future of Taiwan without any involvement, representation, or consent of the people of the island. On 27 February 2002, the National Security Archive at George Washington University in Washington DC release the transcripts of former US national security adviser Henry Kissinger's secret visit to Beijing in 1971 to arrange the summit which eventually led to normalization of US relations with China. The transcripts include the transcript of the meeting on 9-11 July 1971, in which Mr. Kissinger, extensively discussed Taiwan with his Chinese counterparts. The transcripts are available at the National Security Archive at the website of GWU at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB66/ According to the New York Times ("Records dispute Kissinger on his `71 Visit to China", NYTimes, 28 February 2002) the account of the meeting in the newly released documents contradicts the one that Mr. Kissinger published in his later memoirs. In his "The White House Years," published in 1979, he had written that Taiwan "was only mentioned briefly" during the crucial meeting. From these transcripts we now learn that it was a major issue. During that meeting, Kissinger spent 17 hours in negotiations with then Chinese premier Zhou Enlai from July 9 to July 11, 1971, hammering out details of the Nixon trip and drafting the Shanghai Communiqué. With his willful disregard for the position of the native Taiwanese he laid the seeds for the sheer insurmountable problems which plagued US-Taiwan-China relations over the ensuing three decades. The records show Kissinger and Zhou discussing Taiwan's future without any consideration of the views of the people of Taiwan, while Nixon and Kissinger worked hard to make sure their decisions on Taiwan were kept a secret. They also show that Nixon wanted Kissinger to play down the Taiwan issue during the Zhou meetings, but that Kissinger decided to deal with the issue at length. In fact, the transcript shows a prolonged and detailed discussion of Taiwan, which covered nine of the 45 transcript pages. In that first meeting, Kissinger volunteered that the US would not support the Taiwan independence movement, would not accept a "two China" or "one China-one Taiwan" policy and would recognize Taiwan as an "inalienable part" of China. He also indicated the US wanted to fully recognize China sometime within the first two years of Nixon's second term in office. In the transcripts, both Kissinger and Zhou agreed that the relations with the Kuomintang regime on Taiwan were linked to the war in Vietnam. The US was seeking China's help in ending the war in exchange for Washington's switching diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing. They also worked out a deal on how Beijing would replace the Kuomintang's seat in the UN — Washington would withdraw its position that the question is an important one, allowing China to be voted into the world body by a simple majority vote. Taipei would be voted out by a two-thirds vote "as soon as you can get the two-thirds vote for expulsion," Kissinger told Zhou. While Washington would complain loudly about the Taiwan ouster, which its UN envoy George Bush did at the time, it would tacitly accept the switch. | |
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