TAIPEI/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers arrived in Taiwan on Sunday for a two-day visit to meet President Tsai Ing-wen, amid continued military tensions between the island and China after the earlier visit this month from another delegation from the US Congress.
Beijing, which considers Taiwan as a renegade province and does not rule out using force to bring it back into its fold, has launched military exercises around the island to express its anger following the visit to Taipei of a delegation led by the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.
The US representation in Taipei said the delegation was led by Senator Ed Markey, who is accompanied by four other parliamentarians, for a visit that is part of a wider tour of the Indo-Pacific region.
The Taiwanese presidency has indicated that the US Congress delegation will meet Tsai Ing-wen on Monday morning.
In a press release, she welcomed the visit, which “once again demonstrates the strong support for Taiwan of the United States Congress”.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington said that “members of the US Congress should act in accordance with the US government policy of ‘one China'”.
This visit “proves once again that the United States does not want to see stability in the Taiwan Strait and does not limit its efforts to fuel a confrontation between the two camps and interfere in internal Chinese affairs”, it said. – she adds.
Although they have diminished in intensity, China’s military maneuvers around Taiwan continue. According to the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense, eleven Chinese aircraft crossed the demarcation line in the Taiwan Strait on Sunday or entered the air defense zone of the island.
(Report Ben Blanchard Taipei and David Shepardson Washington; French version Jean-Michel Blot and Jean Terzian)
by Ben Blanchard and David Shepardson