Taiwan’s Chen snubs US over China: papers

By Alice Hung

TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian, keen to
shake off China’s claim of sovereignty, ignored U.S. pleas to
retain a policy council on unification which he said should be
scrapped, newspapers reported on Wednesday.

Chen told U.S. Congressman Rob Simmons that the National
Unification Council and 15-year-old guidelines on unification
with China 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 recognises 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.

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.

Simmons said he has no knowledge of the visit and declined
to say whether Chen had upset the delicate status quo across
the Taiwan Strait.

Instead, he warned of China’s growing military threat.

“People of Taiwan must understand the cost of defense is
substantial,” Simmons said in a speech. “The U.S. will not
stand for those who do not stand for themselves.”

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, ending five decades of Nationalist Party rule.

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