DESPITE its military exercises in the Taiwan Strait, China has told the United States that it does not intend to attack Taiwan, the US Defence Department said yesterday.
In public and private conversations, the United States has been assured that the Chinese do not, intend to take any military action against Taiwan, Navy Captain Mike Doubleday, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters.
The Defence Secretary, Mr William Perry, and other senior US officials have said repeatedly that they do not expect current Chinese war games and missile tests off Taiwan to explode into an invasion.
But Capt Doubleday's statement was believed to be the first public indication that Beijing has made concrete assurances to that effect.
Capt Doubleday did not make clear when the assurances were given. But he said the US would proceed with plans to move a second aircraft carrier from the Persian Gulf to waters near Taiwan before Taipei's March 23rd presidential election to make sure Beijing understood Washington's strategic interest in the region.
The US has claimed Chinese manoeuvres and missile tests are a move to intimidate democratic Taiwan, which Communist China considers a renegade province.
Earlier yesterday, Taiwan said China had held its most fearsome war games yet in the latest Taiwan Strait crisis, mobilising some 20 groups of jet fighters and over 40 warships for missile firing and bombing runs.
As China also told the Philippines that its exercises were not a prelude to war, Taiwan's President, Mr Lee Teng-hui, in defiant mood, visited an island near the exercise zone. He said: "Nobody is scared."
A Taipei defence ministry official said Beijing conducted its latest manoeuvres near the island of Dongshan, off the south-eastern coast of China.
In Manila, Chinese officials led by the Vice-Foreign Minister, Mr Tang Jiaxuan, told President Fidel Ramos that China appreciated the President's statement "calling for calm all around".
President Ramos on Wednesday urged China, Taiwan and the US, which has sent a naval task force near Taiwan, to "cool it", saying heightened tensions could harm Asian economies.