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President says Taiwan's future should be decided by residents

ROC Central News Agency

2008-04-17 23:41:30

    Tapei, April 17 (CNA) Restating that China and Taiwan are two separate countries, President Chen Shui-bian said Thursday that only the 23 million inhabitants of Taiwan have the right to decide the future of their island.

    In a clear rejection of President-elect Ma Ying-jeou's recent overture to China, Chen also said that shelving the dispute over Taiwan's sovereignty amounts to "a de facto shelving of (Taiwan's) sovereignty" itself.

    Speaking to foreign participants in a conference on Taiwan's sovereign status, the outgoing president denied the efficacy of both the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Declaration, which have been interpreted by some as acknowledging China's sovereignty over Taiwan. "These declarations were merely... unilateral policy statements," Chen said. The president will hand over power to Ma May 20 after serving two four-year terms.

    The San Francisco Peace Treaty, which took effect in 1952, takes precedence over both the earlier declarations, said Chen, adding that the treaty does not mention which country can claim sovereignty over Taiwan.

    Rounding off his remarks, Chen summed up his stance regarding Taiwan's sovereign status with the following four main points:

    First, Taiwan's sovereignty should be based on self-determination by its populace and on the principle of popular sovereignty, while neither the Cairo Declaration nor the Potsdam Declaration should be employed to constrain the destiny of the Taiwanese people.

    Second, Taiwan, regardless of its title -- no matter whether it is called "Taiwan" or the "Republic of China" -- is a sovereign state, with its sovereignty held in the hands of its people and only by them. Nobody else is entitled to determine the country's future.

    Third, the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are two separate countries -- Taiwan and China, or the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China -- which are independent of each other and do not belong to each other. They are not part of a divided, separately ruled China.

    Fourth, any normalization of cross-strait relations should be carried out under the tenets of the four principles of "sovereignty, democracy, peace and parity." As far as the sovereignty dispute is concerned, self-restraint and self-deprecation are not tolerable because adopting such stances would eventually lead to the shelving and abandonment of sovereignty.

(By Jay Chen and Sofia Wu)

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