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 "We're expecting an announcement as early as this week," a
Republican congressional aide said. Another congressional aide said
the notification from the administration was expected "any time
now".
The sale would mark the first time in four years that the United
States has shipped arms to Taiwan, the longest gap in such arms
sales in nearly four decades.
It comes a year after Congress passed the Naval Transfer Act
authorizing the sale of up to four Perry-class frigates to Taiwan in
December 2014.
Taiwan has said it expects to pay about $176 million for the two
vessels and that it would review its needs before making a decision
on two more.
President Barack Obama signed the transfer act into law, but his
administration still has to tell Congress its plans to move ahead
with the sale, part of Washington's commitment under the Taiwan
Relations Act to ensure Taipei can maintain a credible defense.
The White House declined comment about the sale, which would come
after increasingly intense pressure from Congress, including a
unanimous vote last week by the House Foreign Affairs Committee on
legislation calling on Obama to provide a timeline on when it would
move forward.
Past U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan have attracted strong condemnation
in China, which considers Taiwan a renegade province.
Analysts and congressional sources believe the process has been held
up by the administration's desire to maintain stable working
relations with China, an increasingly powerful strategic rival but
also a vital economic partner as the world's second-largest economy.
Most recently the Obama administration has been working with Beijing
to forge a landmark global climate agreement that was sealed on
Saturday after two weeks of intense negotiations, setting the course
for a historic transformation of the world's fossil fuel-driven
economy within decades.
Congressional sources said the White House was pushing to move ahead
with the Taiwan deal before the end of 2015 - an important deadline
because of Taipei's budget cycle.
"This is positive and helpful toward promoting regional peace and
stability," Taiwan defense ministry spokesman Major General David Lo
said Tuesday at a regular press briefing in Taipei, adding that the
ministry has not received official notice about the authorization.
The frigates will come out of existing U.S. inventory and will not
require new ships to be built.
CHINESE OPPOSITION
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said its position on
opposing U.S. arms sales to Taiwan was clear and consistent.
Such sales are "an interference in China's internal affairs, damage
the peaceful development of ties across the Taiwan Strait and
Sino-U.S. ties", he told reporters in Beijing.
"We urge the U.S. side to earnestly recognize the high sensitivity
and serious harm of weapons sales to Taiwan."
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Democratic Taiwan will elect a new president next month, with Tsai
Ing-wen of the independence-leaning opposition Democratic
Progressive Party the favorite to win. China has warned it will
never accept an independent Taiwan.
Beijing expressed anger at last year's bill, though arms sales to
date to Taiwan have not caused lasting damage to Beijing's relations
with either Washington or Taipei.
The new sales would come at a period of heightened tensions between
the United States and China over the South China Sea, where
Washington has been critical of China's building of man-made islands
to assert expansive territorial claims.
China was angered when the United States sent a guided-missile
destroyer close to one of the islands in October and B-52 bombers
nearby last month.
While Taiwan has been overshadowed recently as a U.S.-China issue by
the South China Sea, it has the potential to flare up again,
especially with Taiwanese elections coming up next month and a party
which traditionally favors independence from China expected to win.
The House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee last week
unanimously passed the Taiwan Naval Support Act, which asked Obama
to submit to Congress a timeframe for sending the ships.
Representative Eliot Engel, the ranking Democrat on the committee,
called last week for more regular arms sales to Taiwan, despite
China's political sensitivity on the subject.
"Our desire not to upset Beijing shouldn't come at the expense of
Taiwan's security," Engel said.
In November, Republican Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate
Armed Services Committee, and Democratic Senator Ben Cardin, ranking
member of the Senate Foreign Relations panel, wrote to Obama urging
"more robust" U.S. security assistance and sales to Taiwan.
"We are troubled that it has now been over four years – the longest
period since the passage of the Taiwan Relations Act in 1979 – since
the administration has notified Congress of a new arms sale
package," the senators wrote.
(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick, Andrea Shalal, and J.R. Wu
in Taipei and Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by James Dalgleish,
Cynthia Osterman and Ryan Woo)
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