Taipei: A small number of US forces are in Taiwan to train with Taiwanese soldiers, President Tsai Ing-wen said in an interview with CNN, confirming the presence of US troops on the self-governing island that China considers its own.
Tensions between Taiwan and China, which has not ruled out taking the island by force, have escalated in recent weeks as Beijing raises military and political pressure.
“We have a wide range of cooperation with the US aiming at increasing our defence capability,” Tsai told CNN in the interview aired on Thursday.
While several Taiwan and international media outlets including Reuters have previously reported such training with US troops, official confirmation could further aggravate US-China relations at a time when Beijing is carrying out muscular military exercises near Taiwan.
Asked about Tsai’s comment, Taiwan defence minister Chiu Kuo-cheng told reporters Taiwan-US military interactions were “quite a lot and quite frequent” and had been going on for a long time.
“During these exchanges, any topic can be discussed,” he said.
However he added that Tsai did not say that US forces are permanently based, or garrisoned, in Taiwan, in response to lawmaker questions that if they were then this could be a pretext for China to attack the island.
“There is no connection between personnel exchanges and the stationing of troops,” Chiu said.