Inquiry begins in Taiwan missile parts incident

WASHINGTON - Taiwan notified the United States in early 2007 that it had been sent potentially hazardous material instead of the helicopter batteries it had ordered, but the U.S. military did not respond until this year, Pentagon officials told NBC News on Tuesday.

The equipment was electrical fuses for intercontinental ballistic missiles, and the revelation has triggered an investigation of the security of U.S. weapons and raised concerns over U.S.-China relations.

E-mail traffic between the U.S. and Taiwan shows that the U.S. military recommended that Taiwanese authorities just "destroy" the incorrect shipment, but the Taiwanese refused because the shipment was marked "explosives," NBC News reported.

When officials in the Pentagon learned of the shipment last week, it took only a matter of days before the four fuses were returned to the U.S., but defense officials had to inform President Bush and the Chinese of the error.

China vehemently opposes U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. Four of the cone-shaped fuses were shipped to Taiwanese officials in fall 2006 instead of the ordered batteries.

Despite quarterly checks of the inventory, defense officials said they never knew the fuses were gone. Only after months of discussions with Taiwan over the missing batteries did the Pentagon finally realize — late last week — the gravity of what had happened.

How it happened, and whether the incident constitutes a violation of any treaty or agreement governing international sales of missile technology, were lingering questions.

Error called intolerable
At a hastily called news conference Tuesday, Ryan Henry, the No. 2 policy official in Defense Secretary Robert Gates' office, said President Bush as well as Chinese leaders were informed of the mistake — an error Henry called intolerable.

"I can not emphasize forcefully enough how strong the secretary feels about this matter and how disconcerting it is to him," Henry told reporters. He added that in an organization the size of the Defense Department there will be mistakes, but that "they cannot be tolerated in the arena in strategic systems, whether they are nuclear or only associated equipment, as was in this case."

In a comment directed at the Chinese concerns, Henry said the error does not suggest that U.S. policies on arms sales to Taiwan have changed.

Taiwan, which split from China amid civil war in 1949, is the most sensitive issue in U.S.-China relations. Chinese officials repeatedly complained about U.S. arms sales to Taiwan during meetings with Gates in Beijing last fall. The U.S. insists it only provides weapons that would allow Taiwan to defend itself.

Beijing claims Taiwan as its own and has threatened to attack should the self-governing island make its de facto independence formal. Washington has hinted that it would go to war to protect Taiwan.

Fuse incident began in 2006
The nearly two-year saga of the fuse shipment began in August 2006.

According to Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne, the fuses, contained in four large shipping containers, had been sent from F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming to a Defense Logistics Agency warehouse at Hill Air Force Base in Utah. The containers apparently ended up in an unclassified area, rather than a classified section where they belonged.

In August 2006, the cylindrical containers — measuring nearly 33 inches high and almost 19 inches in diameter — were sent to the government of Taiwan. There they were placed in storage, U.S. officials said.

In 2007 Taiwanese authorities notified U.S. officials that they did not get the batteries they had ordered, Wynne said. He said it was unclear when in 2007 the notification came, but the Pentagon officials who spoke to NBC News said it was early 2007.

Discussions ensued for months, during which, "we, on our side, thought we were talking about different sorts of batteries. There was an effort to resolve and to reimburse them," said Henry.

Finally, late last week, U.S. military officials realized what had been shipped to Taiwan and worked immediately to get the fuses back. They have now been recovered.

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