SEOUL: North Korea on Friday criticized a US weapons aid package to Taiwan, state media reported on Friday, accusing the United States of driving tensions in the region to “another ignition point of war.”
The United States unveiled an aid package for Taiwan worth up to $345 million on Friday as Congress authorized up to $1 billion worth of weapons for the island as a part of the 2023 budget.
In a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency, Maeng Yong Rim, director general of the North Korean foreign ministry’s Chinese affairs department, said the plan is a “dangerous political and military provocation” and a “flagrant violation” of the One China principle.
“It is the sinister intention of the US to turn Taiwan into an unsinkable advanced base against China and the first-line trench for carrying out its strategy for deterring China,” the North’s statement said.
Beijing claims the democratically governed island as its own territory, and has repeatedly warned against any “official exchanges” between Washington and Taipei. Taiwan rejects China’s sovereignty claims and says only Taiwan’s people can decide their future.
“The Asia-Pacific region, including the Korean peninsula and the Taiwan Strait, is neither a theater of the US military activity nor a test site of war,” the statement said, warning that the US will have to “pay a high price” for “provoking the core interest of China.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met a Chinese delegation in Pyongyang last week and vowed to develop the two countries’ relations to a “new high.” Before the meeting, they reviewed Kim’s newest nuclear-capable missiles and attack drones at a military parade.
China’s military has been flexing its muscles around the island, recently sending dozens of fighters, bombers and other aircraft, including drones, into the skies to Taiwan’s south, according to Taiwan’s defense ministry.
US $345 million military aid to Taiwan
US on Friday announced $345 million in military aid for Taiwan, in what is the Biden administration’s first major package drawing on America’s own stockpiles to help Taiwan counter China.
The White House’s announcement said the package would include defense, education and training for the Taiwanese. Washington will send man-portable air defense systems, or MANPADS, intelligence and surveillance capabilities, firearms and missiles, according to two US officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters ahead of the announcement.
US lawmakers have been pressuring the Pentagon and White House to speed weapons to Taiwan. The goals are to help it counter China and to deter China from considering attacking, by providing Taipei enough weaponry that it would make the price of invasion too high.
While Chinese diplomats protested the move, Taiwan’s trade office in Washington said the US decision to pull arms and other materiel from its stores provided “an important tool to support Taiwan’s self-defense.” In a statement, it pledged to work with the United States to maintain “peace, stability and the status quo across the Taiwan Strait.”
Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense also expressed its appreciation in a statement Saturday morning that thanked “the US for its firm commitment to Taiwan’s security.”
The package is in addition to nearly $19 billion in military sales of F-16s and other major weapons systems that the US has approved for Taiwan. Delivery of those weapons has been hampered by supply chain issues that started during the COVID-19 pandemic and have been exacerbated by the global defense industrial base pressures created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The difference is that this aid is part of a presidential authority approved by Congress last year to draw weapons from current US military stockpiles — so Taiwan will not have to wait for military production and sales. This gets weapons delivered faster than providing funding for new weapons.
The Pentagon has used a similar authority to get billions of dollars worth of munitions to Ukraine.
Taiwan split from China in 1949 amid civil war. Chinese President Xi Jinping maintains China’s right to take over the now self-ruled island, by force if necessary. China has accused the US of turning Taiwan into a “powder keg” through the billions of dollars in weapons sales it has pledged.
The US maintains a “One China” policy under which it does not recognize Taiwan’s as an independent country and has no formal diplomatic relations with the island in deference to Beijing. However, US law requires a credible defense for Taiwan and for the US to treat all threats to the island as matters of “grave concern.”
Getting stockpiles of weapons to Taiwan now, before an attack begins, is one of the lessons the US has learned from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Pentagon deputy defense secretary Kathleen Hicks told The Associated Press earlier this year.
Ukraine “was more of a cold-start approach than the planned approach we have been working on for Taiwan, and we will apply those lessons,” Hicks said. Efforts to resupply Taiwan after a conflict erupted would be complicated because it is an island, she said.
China regularly sends warships and planes across the center line in the Taiwan Strait that provides a buffer between the sides, as well as into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, in an effort to intimidate the island’s 23 million people and wear down its military capabilities.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for China’s embassy in Washington, said in a statement Friday that Beijing was “firmly opposed” to US military ties with Taiwan. The US should “stop selling arms to Taiwan” and “stop creating new factors that could lead to tensions in the Taiwan Strait,” Liu said.
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