Officials in the United States said they have little concern that China will target Nancy Pelosi’s plane if she flies to Taiwan. However, the US House Speaker would be entering an area, where US-China tensions are on the rise. As a result, the Pentagon is preparing for every situation.
Officials told AP that if Pelosi visits Taiwan, which remains a possibility, the military will expand its movement of forces and assets in the Indo-Pacific region.
They declined to elaborate but claimed that fighter jets, ships, surveillance assets, and other military systems would most likely be employed to create overlapping bands of protection for her travel to Taiwan and any time she spent on the land there.
Any foreign travel by a senior US leader requires additional security. But officials said this week that a visit to Taiwan by Pelosi — who would be the highest-ranking US elected official to visit Taiwan since 1997 — would go beyond the usual safety precautions for trips to less risky destinations.
Asked about planned military steps to protect Pelosi in the event of a visit, US Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday that discussion of any specific travel is premature.
He added, “if there’s a decision made that Speaker Pelosi or anyone else is going to travel and they asked for military support, we will do what is necessary to ensure the safe conduct of their visit. And I’ll just leave it at that.”
The US officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security problems, outlined the necessity for buffer zones to be established around the speaker and her plane. The United States already has sizable soldiers distributed over the region, so any additional security could be handled largely by assets already in place.
The military would also need to be ready for any incident, whether a mishap in the air or on the ground. They stated that the United States would require nearby rescue capabilities, which might include helicopters aboard ships currently in the vicinity.
Pelosi, a Democrat from California, has not officially announced any new plans for a trip to Taiwan. She was supposed to go in April, but she canceled after testing positive for COVID-19.
Source: Agencies (edited by Al-Manar English Website)
