Taipei - Taiwan Thursday vowed to seek to join the United Nations despite China's warning that Taipei's UN bid was tantamount to seeking independence and would bring danger to Taiwan. "Taiwan is trying to join the UN as a new nation and it does not want to challenge China's representation. The UN should not deprive the 23 million Taiwan people of their basic right," President Chen Shui-bian said.
He was speaking in a video conference with US press and scholars after US President George W Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao had held talks in Sydney on the sidelines of the APEC summit.
"The UN was founded to safeguard freedom and democracy of all countries, regardless of their size and population. So how can you call all other countries applying to join the UN as seeking peace while calling Taiwan's UN bid destroying peace?" he asked.
"So the UN should let its Secretariat and the General Assembly to process Taiwan's application, not ignore it because China has exerted pressure," he said.
Chen also stressed that Taiwan and China were one country on each side of the Taiwan Strait, and neither was subject to the other's sovereignty.
Taiwan arranged for the video conference take place in the evening, so that Chen could react to the Bush-Hu meeting held in the afternoon.
During the meeting, Hu told Bush that "this and next year will be a period of high danger" in the Taiwan Strait because Taiwan has ignored warnings from all sides and was carrying out "splittist activities" like seeking to join the UN and planning to hold a referendum on joining UN.
"We must make stronger warnings to Taiwan authorities; any forms of "Taiwan independence" activities are doomed to fail," the Xinhuanet.com quoted him as saying.
Bush told Hu that the US would firmly uphold the "one China" policy, observe the three Sino-US communiques and was opposed to any unilateral move to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, and the US fully understood China's concerns over the Taiwan issue.
Regarding Taiwan's UN bid, Bush said that US Deputy Secretary- General John Negroponte has already quickly and clearly conveyed the US government's stance on Taiwan's UN referendum. The US would continue to pay attention to this and would maintain close contact with China.
Chen responded to the Bush-Hu meeting from Taipei because China has barred Chen from attending APEC summit as Beijing sees Taiwan as its breakaway province, but will only allow Chen to send an envoy to the summit.
Taiwan has been a thorny issue in China-US ties, and Taiwan's stepped-up campaign to join the UN has been a new headache for both Beijing and Washington.
The dispute over Taiwan's UN seat dates back to 1949 when the Republic of China (ROC) lost the Chinese Civil War and fled to Taiwan to set up its government-in-exile, stilled called ROC.
The ROC continued to hold China's UN seat until 1971 when the UN passed Resolution 2758 to expel the ROC, or Taiwan, and accept Communist China, called the People's Republic of China (PRC).
In 1993, Taiwan launched the campaign to rejoin the UN under the name of ROC, but has failed each year because China claims that under Resolution 2758, ROC no longer exists.
That forced Taiwan to apply to join the UN as a new nation, called Taiwan, in July. The UN rejected the application and the US, for the first time, openly opposed Taiwan's UN bid, saying it was Taiwan's first step towards seeking independence and would worsen cross-Strait ties.
Negroponte also warned Taiwan not to hold the referendum on joining UN because most countries did not accept Taiwan's statehood.
Taiwan has been waiting nervously for the Bush-Hu summit to see if the two would make statements beyond what they have already made and if the US and China would close deals detrimental to Taiwan.
From the tone of Chen at the video conference, Taiwan will go ahead with the UN referendum, to be held in March along side the presidential election, despite China's anger.
According to China's Anti-Secession Law enacted on March 14, 2005, China would resort to non-peaceful measures to settle the Taiwan issue if Taipei seeks independence or if peaceful means to seek peaceful reunification are exhausted.
