Taipei - On the international arms market, it is believed that money can buy anything. But not in the case of Taiwan.

The government of Taiwan, holder of the world's fifth-largest foreign currency reserves - 281.1 billion US dollars - believes it desperately needs to buy modern weapons to guard against a possible attack from China.

Yet with China's power growing year by year, fewer and fewer countries are willing to sell arms to Taiwan, for fear of offending China.

China sees Taiwan as its breakaway province and has vowed to recover the island by force if Taipei seeks formal independence from - or indefinitely delays unification with - the mainland.

In Taiwan's latest arms deal, the US government on October 3 notified Congress of a 6.5-billion-US-dollar scaled-down arms sales package to Taiwan, ending nearly a year-long freeze on arms sales to the island.

The Bush administration will proceed with the arms sale if Congress does not object within 30 days.

It covers Apache attack helicopters, PAC-3 anti-missile system, 32 Harpoon missiles, spare parts for F16A/B, F5E/5F and C-130 aircraft as well as 182 Javelin anti-tank missiles.

President Ma Ying-jeou welcomed the US approval of the arms sale, calling it the start of a new era of Taiwan-US mutual trust, but military experts warn that the delay in Washington's approval and the scale-down of the arms sale is a warning signal in Taiwan-US ties.

Former vice defence minister Lin Chong-pin told the China Times daily newspaper that as US-China ties have warmed up, Washington probably had notified Beijing in advance of the arms sales to Taipei, and the arms sale was a compromise reached between the US and China.

The approved arms sale is based on a package approved by President George W Bush in 2001, but former president Chen Shui-bian did not instruct the parliament to pass the budget until 2003.

Then, opposition lawmakers blocked the passing of the budget on the grounds that the prices were too high and delivery too late.

This, plus Chen's plan to hold a referendum on Taiwan independence, caused the US to shelve the arms sales package, even after the Taiwan parliament had passed the arms purchase budget in late 2007.

The US continued to freeze the sale even after Ma Ying-jeou, from the China-friendly Chinese Nationalist Party, won the presidential election on March 22, causing speculation that the US was worried that Taiwan was getting too close to China.

Li Shih-ping, a defence analyst, said the delay and reduction of the arms sale shows the US wants to balance ties with Taipei and Beijing, and satisfy the US defence industry, at the same time.

"The US government sent the arms sale proposal to the extended session of the Congress, which was held to pass the
700-billion-US-dollar bail-out package. Apparently the Bush administration wasn't keen to pass the arms sales package," he told Deustche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Taiwan, with a population of 23 million, has faced the military threat of China since 1949 when the Republic of China government lost the Chinese Civil War and fled to Taiwan to set up its government-in-exile.

During the 1950-1960 Cold War days, the US helped defend Taiwan against China, arming Taiwan with F-104 and F-5E warplanes and Hercules and Standard missiles.

In 1981, the Netherlands approved its RDM shipyard's building of two Zwaardvis-class submarines for Taiwan, causing China to downgrade ties with the Hague to charge d' affaires level. Ambassadorial ties were restored in 1984 after the Netherlands had promised not to sell arms to Taiwan in future.

In 1991, France sold six Lafayette frigates to Taiwan.

In 1992, the US and France agreed to sell 150 F-16C/Ds and 60 Mirage 2000-5s to Taiwan respectively, triggering strong protests, including threats to cut diplomatic ties, from China.

Since then, the US has been the only country which continues to sell arms to Taiwan on a regular basis, bound by the Taiwan Relations Act signed when Washington dropped Taipei to recognize Beijing in 1979.

The Act pledged the US would continue to supply defensive arms to Taiwan, though Washington, in the joint communique with China on August 17, 1982, agreed to gradually reduce and eventually terminate arms sales to Taiwan.

Shuai Hua-min, a Taiwan lawmaker and military analyst, admitted that the days when Western nations were eager to sell arms to Taiwan are gone forever.

"It is unlikely that European countries will sell arms to us in the future, as they value their trade ties with China. So the US will be our only source of weapons," he told dpa.

But Ting Shu-fan, a researcher at the Institute of International Relations under the National Chengchih University, is optimistic.

"When the US cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 1979, many Taiwanese were pessimistic, but US-Taiwan ties warmed up in later years. So although currently Europeans countries don't sell arms to Taiwan, the situation may change in 10 or 20 years. Who knows?" he said.