Developing A Strategy to Obtain Observer Status for Taiwan in the International Criminal Police Organization

Floor Speech

I rise in strong support of this bill. Just to put the legislative history in the Record, the House passed H.R. 1853 overwhelmingly late last year. In fact, the vote on this floor was 392-0.

We sent the bill to the Senate. Instead of acting on the House bill, the Senate xeroxed our bill, put their own name on it, and now sends it back here.

If I was driven by ego, I might try to serve in the other body. But the decision to send the bill back to us with their own names on it is a trend we are seeing in the Foreign Affairs area, a trend that I do not condemn because it allows us here on this floor to consider well- drafted House bills twice and to vote on them twice and to emphasize to the administration how serious we are about their being enacted.

I want to thank the Senate author for his decision that we consider this bill a second time. The vote last time was 392-0. My hope is that we have a similar vote today.

I commend the gentleman from New Jersey for describing why this bill is important. Since I have previously commented how important it is that we discuss Foreign Affairs bills not once, but twice, on the floor of this House, I would be remiss if I did not add my own comments.

When this bill was introduced in the House, it was by the chair and ranking member of the Asia and the Pacific Subcommittee, Mr. Salmon and myself.

I appreciate the Senate commending our draftsmanship, since imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.

Why is this bill necessary? Because Taiwan functions day to day as an independent country and it needs to function in that manner inside international organizations.

To date, Taiwan has been admitted to only one international organization, the World Health Organization, and there it has only observer status.

The fiction that Taiwan acts as, functions as, a part of China complicates and interferes with so many international organizations, but it should not be allowed to interfere with law enforcement against criminal gangs and international criminal syndicates.

As things stand now, Taiwan gets some of the information it needs from the international police organization known as INTERPOL, but it is not consistently made available. It is not reliable.

Taiwan doesn't have realtime access to INTERPOL's networks and systems. This doesn't just hurt the people of Taiwan, but hurts people all over the world who are potential victims of criminals who cannot be apprehended because we don't have an efficient sharing of information as part of this multilateral law enforcement agency.

It is for this reason that the bill directs the President to develop a strategy to obtain at least observer status for Taiwan in the International Criminal Police Organization, or INTERPOL.

I commend the gentleman from New Jersey for managing this bill here today, and I commend the chairman of the Asia and the Pacific Subcommittee, Mr. Salmon, for introducing this bill.
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