India, June 19 -- Taiwan needs to purchase American weapons to ensure its self-defence in the face of a growing threat from Beijing, the island's top diplomat in the US said, adding that he has seen no change in Washington's policy toward the self-governing island that China claims as its own.

A $14-billion arms sale package to Taiwan is still in limbo after President Donald Trump returned from Beijing in May and said he had discussed the proposal "in great detail" with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, heightening anxieties in Taiwan and raising concerns among lawmakers on the Capitol Hill.

"We need those arms for defensive purposes," Alexander Yui Tah-ray, who heads the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the US, told The A...