NATO experts attend Taipei security event, published by ‘The China Post’
CNA
September 19, 2016, 12:20 am TWN
Link: http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/intl-community/2016/09/19/478809/NATO-experts.htm
TAIPEI, Taiwan — An ultra low-profile national security conference was held recently in Taipei with more than 10 international experts in the fields of global, international and national security participating, including experts from NATO making their first visit to Taiwan.
A few think tanks and government agencies were also notified before the Mid-Autumn Festival, which falls on Sept. 15 this year, that a group of guests were to visit them, but the visits were to be kept a secret and the meetings held in closed-door form.
Such an arrangement has aroused curiosity about the identity of the visiting guests.
The mystery was solved after the Institute for Global Security and Defense Affairs (IGSDA), an online think tank, recently published on its website to confirm that the National Security Conference in Taiwan: Global and Regional Security Challenges and Threat to NATO & Asia was held in Taipei Sept. 12-13.
The conference was organized and hosted by Taiwan Think Tank (TTT) in cooperation with the IGSDA.
The elite group of international experts in the fields of global, international and national security who spoke at this conference were from Taiwan, Italy, Greece, the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Egypt and Japan, as well as experts from NATO.
The conference was chaired by Sayed Ghoneim, a national security expert at Abu Dhabi and IGSDA chairman, it said.
The website also showed the national flag of the Republic of China on Taiwan.
Asked as to why the conference kept such a low profile, a well-informed source said that this was because it was the first time that such high-ranking NATO experts had come to Taiwan, and because of the sensitivity of their status, both sides had reached a tacit understanding to keeping the conference below the radar.
The NATO experts visited Taiwan mainly because they have interest in the new situation in the Asia Pacific and Taiwan’s strategy, so that they agreed to accept the invitation after President Tsai Ing-wen assumed office in May and provide their views, the source said.
