President Ma Ying-jeou on the morning of August 11 at the Presidential Office met with a delegation from the United States House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. The president, on behalf of the government and people of the Republic of China, extended a warm welcome to the delegation.
President Ma said that rarely has such a large US Congressional delegation visited Taiwan. He noted in particular that the majority of congressmen in this delegation are visiting Taiwan for the first time. The president said he hopes the members of the delegation will be able to come to have a better understanding of Taiwan's development in many fields on this trip.
President Ma noted that the focus of the group on this visit is on the repair and maintenance of civilian airplanes and high speed railway transportation. Taiwan has displayed rapid development and a number of achievements in these two areas in recent years, he said.
The president stressed that since taking office on May 20, the new government has been working extremely hard to strengthen relations between Taiwan and the United States. He said that an improvement in mutual trust in high levels of government between the two countries is needed after the previous eight years. The president added that an extremely important link in this effort is for Taiwan to improve its relations with Mainland China. He said that the long-term confrontational state between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait impacted relations between Taiwan and the United States.
President Ma furthermore said that in the wake of Taiwan improving relations with Mainland China, he was quite pleased to note that US President George W. Bush in an interview on July 30 at the White House said that he was "very pleased with the state of relations" between Taiwan and Mainland China. President Ma said he is confident that reducing or eliminating the drag on US-Taiwan ties caused by the poor state of relations between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait will enable relations between Taiwan and the United States to improve significantly.
President Ma said that the warming of relations between Taiwan and Mainland China will not impact Taiwan's desire to procure arms from the United States. He said Taiwan must demonstrate its determination to defend itself, adding that he hopes to see Taiwan's defense budget account for at least 3% of GDP. As a result, he said that Taiwan last year already presented a list of arms it desires to procure from the United States, and that it hopes the US government will proceed according to legal procedures in carrying out the arms sales as soon as possible. President Ma also said that he hopes that Taiwan and the United States can negotiate and sign a free trade agreement, and discuss imports of US beef, like normal countries. He said that signing such agreements would be in the interest of both countries. President Ma hopes that resolutions can be found to these issues.
President Ma said he is delighted by the visit to Taiwan by the delegation and hopes that in the future even more congressmen or congressional assistants can visit Taiwan. He said that this would help to mend the past eight years, which can be characterized by a lack of mutual trust.
Congressman Jerry Costello, who is the leader of the delegation, expressed his appreciation to President Ma for taking time out of his busy schedule to meet with them. Congressman Costello said that this visit is significant on two fronts. First he said that after riding on the Taiwan high speed rail on August 10, the delegation realizes that the rail system is one of the best transportation systems in the world. The other significance of this visit is to allow the Taiwan public to understand that the United States deeply cherishes the friendship with Taiwan over the past 50 years and that efforts will be made to continue to strengthen the friendly relationship in the future.