Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=11/30/2000

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

NUMBER=2-269854

TITLE=CHINA-TAIWAN (L-ONLY)

BYLINE=LETA HONG FINCHER

DATELINE=BEIJING

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: China has spurned Taiwan's latest offer to renew dialogue with the mainland, insisting again that Taiwan recognize it is a part of China first. Beijing Correspondent Leta Hong Fincher

reports on the latest diplomatic wrangling across the Taiwan Strait.

TEXT: This is China's first official reaction to a Taiwan presidential advisory group's recent recommendation on how to break the deadlock between the two sides and restart dialogue. The group advised Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian to embrace in spirit what China calls the one-China principle, without actually using those words.

But a spokesman for the Taiwan Affairs Office of China's cabinet, Zhang Mingqing, rejected Taiwan's newest overture Thursday.

/// ZHANG ACT IN CHINESE, THEN FADE ///

He says the proposal is no more than semantics and that as long as Taiwan refuses to accept the one-China principle, the situation across

the Strait will be what he called very dangerous.

Last Sunday, a special Taiwanese panel of twenty-odd scholars, business leaders and lawmakers advised President Chen Shui-bian to follow the

ambiguous wording of Taiwan's 1947 constitution in trying to break the stalemate with mainland China. It is a complex solution. That constitution was written two years before Taiwan's Nationalists lost a civil war to the China's Communists. And it implied that there was only one China but a non-Communist China the Nationalists then called the Republic of China.

/// ZHANG ACT IN CHINESE, THEN FADE ///

But Mr. Zhang says their suggestions are mere word games. He again demanded that Taiwan return to a 1992 consensus reached between the two sides. In 1992, officials from the Beijing and Taiwan governments agreed that there was only one China, but that each side would avoid defining the term.

Chen Shui-bian has made repeated offers of dialogue with Beijing since he became Taiwan's new President last May. But Mr. Chen has to date avoided accepting the 1992 agreement on one China as a precondition for talks with the mainland.

China considers Taiwan a renegade province, and has threatened to use force against the island if it declares independence or drags its feet on

reunification with the mainland.

Official talks between the two sides have been frozen since July 1999, when former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui called for an equal, status for Taiwan. (signed)

NEB/HK/LHF/JO/PLM