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MOFA pledges not to yield to U.S. pressure on referendum bid

ROC Central News Agency

2007-09-01 14:05:11

    Taipei, Sept. 1 (CNA) Taiwan will not compromise on its planned U.N. bid referendum, despite mounting pressure from the United States to give up the idea, Minister of Foreign Affairs James Huang said Friday.

    Huang said he will not be surprised if Washington continues to step up its pressure on Taiwan and urged the public to "deal with the situation calmly" and not dance to the tune of other countries.

    Huang said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) will continue to try to communicate with the U.S. government on the issue because he believes the two countries share more common values than differences, noting that President Chen Shui-bian used the opportunity of his recent U.S. transit stops to discuss the issue with American visitors to his charter plane.

    According to Huang, the referendum on whether to use the name Taiwan to apply to join the United Nations will not change Chen's "four noes" pledges to the United States or change the status quo across the Taiwan Strait.

    Even if the proposal is adopted in the referendum, the country's official name and Constitution will remain unchanged, Huang said.

    He said the referendum is merely a way for Taiwan to show the international community the country's desire to join the United Nations and should not be mistaken as a move toward "de jure independence."

    Huang made the remarks after two U.S. officials repeated over the past week Washington's objection to the planned referendum.

    In an interview on Hong Kong TV Monday, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said the United States is opposed to the referendum because Washington sees it as a step "toward a declaration of independence of Taiwan" and "toward an alteration of the status quo."

    On Thursday, Dennis Wilder, senior director for Asian affairs of the White House National Security Council, said Washington does not support Taiwan's membership of the United Nations, which requires statehood, because "Taiwan, or the Republic of China, is not at this point a state in the international community."

    Wilder said the position of the U.S. government is that the status of the ROC "is an issue undecided."

    Meanwhile, MOFA officials said Wilder's statement was inconsistent with the "six assurances" made in 1982 by the then-Reagan administration to Taiwan and that the MOFA will ask the U.S. side to clarify its stance on the issue.

    The "six assurances" included that the United States would not alter its position about the sovereignty of Taiwan, which was that the question was one to be decided peacefully by the Chinese themselves and that the United States would not formally recognize Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan.

(By Y.F. Low)

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