MTAG: TAIWAN EXPORT CONTROL IMPLEMENTATION AND

S E C R E T AIT TAIPEI 000855 SIPDIS SIPDIS STATE FOR EAP/TC AND ISN/MTR E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/13/2026 TAGS: ECCT PARM MTCRE JP TW SUBJECT: MTAG: TAIWAN EXPORT CONTROL IMPLEMENTATION AND LEFTOVER GAS REF: A. STATE 36441 ¶B. STATE 30954 ¶C. STATE 21176 ¶D. AIT TAIPEI 00171 ¶E. STATE 008195 ¶F. AIT TAIPEI 00141 Classified By: AIT ACTING DIRECTOR DAVID KEEGAN, REASONS 1.4 B, C, D. ¶1. (S) Summary: In a March 9 meeting with Taiwan's Bureau of Foreign Trade (BOFT),and a March 10 meeting with Taiwan's National Security Council (NSC),AIT delivered ref A demarche on the need for Taiwan to expeditiously implement its "gameplan" commitments on export/transit/transshipment licenses. BOFT discussed some of the technical challenges of implementation. NSC reaffirmed that the Chen Administration takes export control issues very seriously, and offered in separate conversations to both AIT and to BOFT to weigh in with any recalcitrant agencies. BOFT has reserved seats for 20-30 U.S. companies at an export control seminar on March ¶21. In a separate meeting with a U.S.-invested chemical company, AIT heard complaints about the lengthy approval process for U.S. licenses. Action request para 6. End summary. BOFT Concerned About Implementation Details -------------- ¶2. (S) During the March 9 meeting with BOFT, AIT emphasized that U.S. agencies were losing patience with the slow pace of implementation of the licensing aspect of the export control gameplan. BOFT Export Control Task Force Head Wally Su said he understood the message. He said BOFT had devoted considerable time to planning how to implement the commitments and believed the transit/transshipment licenses presented the greatest challenge. Su said that BOFT is now consulting with the Navigation Bureau of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications on how to identify sensitive commodity cargoes bound for Iran or North Korea on ships that transit Taiwan. One possible approach, according to Su, would be to issue a notice of the license requirement, and to conduct searches of all ships that call on Iran or North Korea ports. Export Control Seminar -------------- ¶3. (SBU) BOFT has reserved 20-30 seats for representatives of U.S. companies in Taiwan to attend an export control seminar in Taipei on March 21 that will focus on a comparison of Taiwan's and Japan's export control systems. AIT is coordinating with Amcham to get the word out to U.S. companies that might be interested. Taiwan National Security Council -------------- ¶4. (S) AIT met with Taiwan NSC Senior Advisor Lin Chen-wei on March 10 in order to make sure the demarche received high-level political attention. Dr. Lin assured AIT that the Taiwan government stood by the commitments it had made on export control and took the need to strengthen its export control regime very seriously. Later on March 10, Lin called AIT to inform us that he had spoken with BOFT and offered to "push" any agencies that were not giving full cooperation. He reported that BOFT had told him the main problems it faced were manpower and capacity limits. AIT repeated to NSC the message that the Taiwan government needed to demonstrate its commitment to export control with concrete actions. U.S.-Invested Chemical Company Complains -------------- ¶5. (C) An American executive working for a U.S.-Taiwan industrial gas joint venture recently told AIT his company has given up on requesting re-export licenses for U.S.-made restricted gases because no commercial deal could wait the 2-3 months it took to get a license approved. As a result of the long lead times required to re-export, his company only exported directly from the U.S. to customers in Japan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan who had predictable needs, but the company could not export between these locations to meet immediate needs. He noted that his company could cut weeks off the delivery time for restricted gases by shipping from facilities in Canada instead of the United States because of the shorter time needed to get a Canadian export license. He also noted that Japanese companies could obtain export and re-export licenses within a few days and had the additional advantage of shorter shipping distances to major markets. (BOFT confirmed to AIT that it knew of cases where Japan had been able to issue re-export licenses within three days.) Residual Gas -------------- ¶6. (S) In the course of his conversation with AIT, the American executive noted that the International Maritime Dangerous Goods Convention allows residual gases of less than 50 kilos in a container to be shipped without a license because of the environmental and safety risks of trying to clean the residue from the container. Action request: AIT would like Washington guidance on whether the thresholds used in international conventions will apply to the items on Taiwan's expanded sensitive commodities list. KEEGAN