Former US president George W Bush to visit Taiwan

Taipei - Former US president George W Bush is to visit Taiwan in late April, a media report said Wednesday.

Next Magazine said that Bush, who left office in January 2009, has accepted the invitation to visit the island. He is to deliver a speech and meet with Taiwan officials, the weekly quoted an unnamed source as saying.

The source said Taiwan has defined visit as an academic exchange to make it less sensitive to China, who takes a dim view of official diplomatic visits to the island, which it considers a breakaway province.

The Chinese authorities had been notified of the visit and said they would not object, the source said.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Chen Ming-cheng confirmed that Taipei had issued the invitation.

To avoid angering China, many foreign leaders, including Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev, visited Taiwan only after retiring from political office.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/316548,former-us-president-george-w-bush-to-visit-taiwan.html.