According to Reuters news service:
The authoritative Jane's Defense Weekly reports that this is a way the democratic breakaway island nation may be hoping to get around Communist China's pressure on the United States that prompted the Clinton-Gore administration to block the sale of more-modern, highly sophisticated, Aegis-equipped, air-defense destroyers earlier this year.
The destroyers purportedly now under consideration by Taipei, which refused to comment, are older, less-sophisticated Kidd-class guided-missile destroyers.
Jane's said the Kidd-class destroyers could for the first time give the Taiwan navy – which has no highly sophisticated destroyers – the ability to conduct simultaneous anti-air, anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare.
It also indicated Taiwan was looking at whether the state-of-the-art Aegis-type radar command system, which tracks and shoots down multiple missiles in flight, could be added later onto the Kidd-class destroyers, thus giving Taiwan a key additional, modern, defensive weapons system.
In April, after the mainland Chinese objected strenuously to the sale of four Aegis-equipped destroyers to Taiwan, the Clinton-Gore administration – which has a treaty obligation to come to the military defense of Taiwan if it is attacked – nixed the deal.
The four less-modern, Kidd-class destroyers Taiwan is believed to have its eye on now were commissioned in 1981 and 1982, then decommissioned in 1998 and 1999 after only half their intended service life.
Washington proposed to convey the four ships first to Greece in 1998 and then to Australia in 1999 under a $500-$700 million five-year, interest-free, lease-to-own program.
It was unable to interest either nation.
Beijing, which is determined to bring back what it considers its rebel province into union with the mainland, by force if necessary, continues to oppose any arms sales by the United States to Taiwan.
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