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Tokyo, March 6 (CNA) The so-called Taiwan issue is not an internal issue of China, but an issue involving human rights, an ex-presidential candidate of Taiwan said in Tokyo on Monday.

Peng Ming-min, who represented the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in Taiwan's presidential race four years ago, said the people of Taiwan have the right to choose their own nation and government, and that that is legitimately the ultimate level of human rights.

"Human rights is an international issue and by no means an internal affair," Peng stressed in an interview with the Japanese business newspaper Sankei Shimbun.

Peng, currently the head of the Taipei-based National Building Club, said all the leading presidential candidates in Taiwan -- the ruling Kuomintang's Lien Chan, DPP's Chen Shui-bian and independent James Soong -- have decisively professed the independent sovereignty of Taiwan, but none of them has dared to publicly make such a claim under military threats from Beijing.

All of the trio, who are now locked in a hotly contested race slated for March 18, have opted for vague rhetoric on national identity because they don't want Taiwan to fall under China's control on the one hand, and because they are trying hard to avoid any words or moves that may trigger military conflict in the Taiwan Strait on the other, Peng noted.

But basically, Peng added, the trio's stances on Taiwan's international status are identical -- that Taiwan is an independent sovereignty -- because none of them think they could afford to defy the common will of the people of Taiwan.

When asked about the concept of "Taiwan independence," which remains confusing for most of the people outside Taiwan, Peng said that both the KMT and DPP claim that the Republic of China on Taiwan is an independent nation having its own sovereignty, and that there is no need for Taiwan to declare independence, nor is it necessary to include independence in the Constitution.

Peng said Beijing is absolutely wrong in saying in its recent white paper that the Taiwan issue is an internal issue of China. According to the Atlantic Charter adopted in 1941, Peng said, "no territorial changes should be desired that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned." (By K.M. Huang and Deborah Kuo)