Taiwan vows to continue pursuit of UN membership

Taiwan today pledged to forge ahead with its campaign for United Nations membership, as China celebrated an expected victory after a Taiwanese application to enter the world body was rejected for the 15th straight year.

A UN General Assembly committee decided last night against placing Taiwan’s application on the Assembly’s agenda after hearing strong opposition from Beijing, which claims the breakaway island as part of its territory.

The two sides split amid civil war in 1949, and China objects to any moves that give Taiwan the trappings of sovereignty, including membership in international organisations.

Joining China in opposing the Taiwanese bid was Egypt, while two of the island’s diminishing cadre of diplomatic allies – St Vincent and the Solomon Islands – spoke in favour, said Janos Tisovszky, spokesman for the assembly president.

Addressing reporters in Taipei, foreign ministry spokesman David Wang said the island remained unbowed in its determination to win UN membership, despite the General Committee’s action.

“We will continue down this road, and keep up our efforts,” Wang said.

This year’s Taiwanese bid came amid mounting tension with China over President’s Chen Shui-bian’s decision to apply to the world body under the name Taiwan, rather than the Republic of China, the island’s official title.

While Beijing opposes Taiwanese membership under any name at all, the Taiwan name is seen as particularly provocative because it appears to negate the “one China” concept that has been at the heart of its policy toward the island for the past 58 years.

China has long threatened to attack if Taiwan moves to make its de facto independence permanent.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said today that the UN decision reaffirmed Beijing’s position that the island is an integral part of China.

“No one can change the fact that Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territories,” the state-run Xinhua News Agency cited Jiang as saying.

Just before yesterday’s vote, China’s UN Ambassador Wang Guangya described Taiwan’s UN entry bid as a plot to promote independence.

He said Chen was using the issue to inflame tensions with Beijing as a way to improve his political standing in Taiwan.

“Instead of offering blessings to the Taiwan compatriots, these activities can only cause disastrous consequences,” Xinhua, in a separate report, quoted Wang as saying. “We hope and believe that the Taiwan compatriots can clearly see Chen’s ulterior motives.”

On Saturday, Chen’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party sponsored a massive rally in the southern city of Kaohsiung in favour of entering the United Nations under the Taiwan name.

On the same day, the main opposition Nationalists held a parallel rally in the central city of Taichung, also calling for UN membership for the island.

But unlike the DPP, they said it should enter under the Republic of China moniker – the same title Taiwan had when the China UN seat was transferred to the Beijing-based government of the People’s Republic of China in 1971.