Taiwan’s Chen snubs US over stance on China

By Alice Hung

TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian, keen to
shake off China’s claim of sovereignty over the island, ignored
U.S. pleas to retain a policy-making council on unification
which he branded absurd and said should be scrapped.

Chen told visiting U.S. Congressman Rob Simmons on
Wednesday the National Unification Council and 15-year-old
guidelines on unification with the mainland were “absurd
products of an absurd era.”

Chen’s remarks followed newspaper reports that he had
snubbed a special U.S. envoy, refusing to go back on his
decision to scrap the council and the guidelines.

“The National Unification Guidelines and the National
Unification Council certainly violate the principle of popular
sovereignty,” Chen told the Connecticut congressman who was in
Taiwan to promote a special package of U.S. arms, including
eight diesel-electric submarines.

“It deprives Taiwan people’s rights to freely decide on
cross-Strait relations and the future direction of our
country,” Chen said in comments broadcast on cable news network
TVBS.

The United States switched diplomatic recognition from
Taipei to Beijing in 1979 and recognizes the mainland as
China’s sole legitimate government — the “one-China” policy —
but in a deliberately ambiguous piece of foreign policy it is
also obliged by law to help Taiwan defend itself.

Chen said the council and the unification guidelines should
be scrapped, prompting falls in Taiwan stocks and currency.

Taiwan newspapers said White House official Dennis Wilder
secretly visited the island on Tuesday last week to express
U.S. concerns over Chen’s plan.

“A decision has been made and it is impossible to change
the decision,” Chen was quoted by the United Daily News as
telling Wilder.

China has vowed to attack Taiwan if the island formally
declares statehood. The two sides split at the end of the
Chinese civil war in 1949 when the defeated Nationalists fled
into exile on the island.

Chen said last month that it was time to consider scrapping
the guidelines and the council, which was set up in 1990 and
was formerly the island’s top policy-making body on the
question of unification.

The council has been dormant since Chen took office in 2000
and ended five decades of Nationalist Party rule.

The China Times quoted unidentified sources as saying
Wilder warned Chen taking such a move would hurt mutual trust
between Taipei and Washington and upset cross-Strait ties. But
Wilder failed to convince Chen, it added.

If Chen dissolved the council and the guidelines, he would
break a promise he made in his 2000 inauguration speech and
underscore Beijing’s suspicions that Chen is pushing for
independence.

China’s top official on Taiwan called the plan “a dangerous
sign of escalation of Taiwan separatists’ activities,” the
official Xinhua news agency said, echoing Beijing’s previous
rhetoric dubbing Chen a “troublemaker” and “saboteur” of peace
and stability in Asia.

“We’ll keep close watch on their activities and prepare to
deal with any possible complicated situation at any time,” Chen
Yunlin, minister the cabinet’s policy-making Taiwan Affairs
Office, was quoted as saying.

Washington has reiterated its opposition to moves that
could upset delicate ties between China and Taiwan after Chen’s
comments and urged the two sides to avoid misunderstandings.