Dampha thanks for your posting on Taiwan's cheque book
diplomacy.It is clear that Gambia's diplomatic
relation with Taiwan is not benefiting the nation but
individuals.Jammeh and cohorts are criminals who knows
how to play their games.
Abdou Karim Sanneh
--- Dampha Kebba <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I remember one time talking about Yaya’s corruption
> and how the Dictatorship
> received dollars in CASH from Taiwan as bribery for
> their constant pimping
> for Taiwan. When I said that, I also remember some
> APRC sycophants trying to
> cast doubt on what I said by asking a rhetorical
> question about whether it
> was conceivable for a country like Taiwan to give
> Gambian army lieutenants
> millions of dollars in suitcases to transport from
> continent to continent.
> Well, patience always pays. Here is some education
> for the APRC mental
> midgets. Here is an article from the Washington
> Post. I can guarantee my
> last dime that somewhere in those papers that were
> leaked to China, Yaya’s
> name is there. He might be seen as a small fry
> because of the amounts he got
> and the relative insignificance of Gambia when
> compared with the US, Japan
> and South Africa. But to us Gambians, thanks to the
> millions of dollars
> Taiwan illegally gave to Yaya, we have a
> Dictatorship in our country. We
> have a Dictatorship that slaughters innocent and
> defenseless children in
> broad daylight and enslave the citizenship by using
> Taiwanese dollars to
> bribe destitute Gambians. We have a Dictatorship
> that uses Taiwanese dollars
> to buy arms and fuel conflict in the sub-region.
> KB
>
__________________________________________________________________
> TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Desperate for international
> support, Taiwan under former
> president Lee Teng-hui established a secret $100
> million fund to buy
> influence with foreign governments, institutions and
> individuals, including
> some in the United States, according to current and
> former Taiwanese
> officials.
> The fund was the source of multimillion-dollar
> payments to leaders in
> Nicaragua, South Africa and Panama, according to
> senior Taiwanese officials
> and government reports. It also provided financial
> support, legal under U.S.
> law, for U.S. think tanks and Washington lobbyists,
> they said. Several
> people now in senior positions in the Bush
> administration, as well as former
> Japanese prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, were
> beneficiaries, according to
> the officials and documents.
> The fund operated from 1994 until 2000 under the
> National Security Bureau,
> Taiwan's main intelligence agency, with no
> legislative oversight. Taiwan's
> new president, Chen Shui-bian, closed the fund
> following the disappearance
> of one of its senior accountants, Col. Liu
> Kuan-chun, who allegedly
> embezzled $5.5 million.
> Liu's whereabouts are not known. But a senior
> Taiwanese official said he
> feared Liu fled to China and might still be there,
> which would provide
> Chinese intelligence with a potential gold mine of
> incriminating
> information.
> Details about the fund were revealed in secret
> documents published in Taiwan
> and Hong Kong in the last two weeks, touching off a
> political crisis in
> Taiwan. Interviews with current and former Taiwanese
> officials confirmed
> many of the events detailed in the documents and
> provided information about
> additional payments made via the fund.
> That Taiwan has used money to win friends and
> influence people has been an
> open secret for decades. Its lobbying machine is one
> of Washington's
> slickest, outclassing the less practiced attempts by
> its Communist
> adversaries from China, who in the 1990s were
> discovered to have attempted
> to funnel money to the Democratic Party. Senior
> officials in Taiwan said
> they worried that Taiwan has lost its advantage in
> the struggle for
> influence now that the documents have been leaked.
> "People will wonder about
> our ability to keep things secret," said Bi-khim
> Hsiao, a formerpresidential
> adviser and now a legislator. "This has been a dark
> week for Taiwan."
> The documents and interviews paint the most detailed
> picture yet of a small
> country -- 23 million inhabitants -- trying to
> compete against the diplomacy
> of the People's Republic of China.
> Taiwan was thrown out of the United Nations in 1971
> to make way for China;
> only 28 countries still recognize the island. The
> United States has had no
> diplomatic ties with Taiwan for three decades. The
> fund was established
> against that background on June 20, 1994, Taiwanese
> sources said, when Lee
> brought the National Security Bureau under his
> control after years of
> operation outside executive branch management. Lee
> suggested that Ying
> Tsung-wen, the bureau's chief at the time, keep the
> fund hidden from the
> legislature, sources said.
> The fund was divided into seven steering committees.
> One was the Mingde, or
> Clear Virtue, committee, responsible for ties with
> the United States and
> Japan, Taiwan's most important relationships. Su
> Chi, a former Taiwanese
> official in charge of relations with China,
> confirmed the existence of the
> group and his participation in its activities.
> Su said the group sought to identify influential
> Americans and Japanese who
> would be sympathetic to Taiwan's cause. The group
> helped formulate Taiwan's
> policy toward Japan and the United States and tried
> to raise Taiwan's
> profile there. One former Taiwanese official
> involved in U.S.-China
> relations described Taiwan's payments to U.S.
> academics and former
> administration officials as "an insurance policy."
> "We did not generally believe that you could buy
> Americans," he said. "And
> we were very clear about the law," which bans
> contributions to political
> campaigns from foreign donors.
> The former official said Taiwan regularly funded
> research by U.S. academics
> on Taiwan; backed conferences put on by such think
> tanks as the American
> Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation;
> and cultivated
> relationships in Congress, sending employees of
> influential legislators on
> free trips to Taiwan. It did not, he said, attempt
> to edit U.S. researchers'
> work or lean on Americans to reach certain
> conclusions. And, he said, it
> tried to maintain good relations with people who had
> been sympathetic to
> Taiwan while they were in government.
> "We know there is a revolving door in Washington,"
> he said. "So we follow
> the careers of people and hope we can cooperate."
> One of the big successes claimed by the secret
> fund's administrators was
> then-President Lee's trip to the United States in
> 1995, which touched off a
> rapid deterioration of U.S. ties with China and
> brought Taiwan, China and
> the United States to the brink of conflict.
> Lee's administration cultivated close ties to the
> Washington-based lobbying
> firm Shandwick Public Affairs Inc., and its sister
> firms, Cassidy &
> Associates and Powell Tate. From Jan. 1, 1995, to
> Dec. 31, 2000, the firms
> received $9,818,548 from Taiwan, according to
> Justice Department records.
> Taiwanese officials confirmed that half the payments
> came from Lee's fund
> and half came from his Nationalist Party through the
> Taiwan Research
> Institute.
> A spokesman for Cassidy & Associates said the firms
> assumed "the funding was
> coming from private sources" via the Taiwan Research
> Institute. Sources in
> Taiwan said the research institute is funded almost
> completely by the
> Nationalist Party.
> Cassidy and the other firms played an important role
> in lobbying Congress to
> pressure the Clinton administration to grant Lee a
> visa to attend a reunion
> at Cornell University. The trip enraged China, which
> fired missiles miles
> into the sea off Taiwan's two main ports. The United
> States dispatched two
> aircraft carrier battle groups to the region to
> signal support for Taiwan.
> Lee then used the Mingde group to dispatch a leading
> industrialist,
=== message truncated ===


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