President Tsai Ing-wen (???) confirmed for the first time the presence of U.S. military personnel in Taiwan, during an interview with CNN released Thursday.
Tsai said Taiwan had “a wide range of cooperation with the U.S. aiming at increasing our defense capability.”
The president also expressed faith that Washington would help defend against a Chinese attack, days after her U.S. counterpart Joe Biden pledged to do so during a CNN town hall event.
The White House later issued a clarification stating that U.S. policy toward Taiwan — over which China has vowed to exert irredentist claims using force if necessary — remained unchanged.
International media reported earlier this month that the U.S. had been rotating a small number of U.S. Marines and Special Operations Forces soldiers on the island to train with the Taiwanese military, amid rising tensions across the Taiwan Strait.
Tsai, however, declined to specify how many American service members have been sent to Taiwan, saying the number was “not as many as people thought.”
At a legislative meeting Thursday morning, however, Taiwan’s Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng (???) denied that U.S. troops had been deployed to Taiwan.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel