N Korea tested missile, Japan says

UNCONFIRMED: Although the Japanese media said yesterday that North Korea fired a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan, more facts were not forthcoming

AFP , TOKYO

North Korea is believed to have fired a short-range missile yesterday into the Sea of Japan, Japanese news reports said, amid a standoff between the communist state and the outside world over its nuclear ambitions.

Japanese public broadcaster NHK said the missile was fired from the east coast of North Korea and flew about 100km until it fell into the sea.

Jiji Press said the test came at about 8am on Saturday and only consisted of one missile. According to Kyodo News, Japan was informed of the test by the US military and Cabinet members were told to prepare for an emergency.

A Japanese foreign ministry official said only that Tokyo had "unconfirmed reports" about a missile.

A South Korean police officer looks at North Korea's Scud-B missile, center, and other missiles at the Korea War Memorial Museum in Seoul in this 2003 file photo.

A South Korean defense ministry official said Seoul had no information and a US military spokeswoman in Japan said the US forces do not discuss intelligence matters.

North Korea shocked the world in August 1998 by firing a long-range Taepodong-1 missile with a range of up to 2,000km over Japan into the Pacific Ocean, claiming it was a satellite launch.

Short-range missile launches have been more routine, but have often been timed to send signals. North Korea's last high-profile launches were in March 2003, when it lobbed two short-range missiles into the Sea of Japan, coinciding with the inauguration of South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun.

Japanese and US media have reported that North Korea is preparing an underground nuclear test, with Kyodo News saying it could come as early as June.

North Korea has in recent months sent out a series of defiant statements to the world including one in March saying it would no longer be bound by a moratorium on testing long-range missiles.

North Korea's official media on Saturday said no resolution on its nuclear ambitions would be possible under the US presidency of George W. Bush, calling him a "hooligan bereft of any personality as a human being, to say nothing of stature as president of a country."

Talks can bring peace

By Huang Jei-hsuan

Against the backdrop of a China-bug-infected feverish Taiwan, the "four-nation meeting," brought up by former president Lee Tung-hwei to settle the cross-strait issue peacefully, came like a breath of fresh air.

The biggest obstacle is, of course, China. But the situation may not be as hopeless as most people might assume.

One of the basic realities is that China and Taiwan can never engage in productive direct talks because of an imbalance in strength. China will always have the urge to flex its muscles while Taiwan suffers a continuous lack of confidence to assert itself.

It's also dangerous for the two to talk directly after China's enactment of the "Anti-Secession" Law because what happens in the talks may "force China to conclude that all hopes for unification have been exhausted." The talks can then actually precipitate a military attack on Taiwan by China.

Therefore, any talks initiated by Taiwan now would be nothing more than surrender. In the case where China were to initiate the talks, Taiwan would have no alternative but to insist as a pre-condition that China repeals all references to "non-peaceful means" in its "law." None of these are probable in the current atmosphere.

One then has to conclude that only a multi-nation conference holds any reasonable probability of solving the impasse peacefully.

A multi-nation conference can be held periodically and ends only when a peaceful outcome is achieved. It can last months or even years. While the talks are ongoing, the chance for military confrontation is diminished. In contrast, direct talks between Taiwan and China can at any time cause a war just because of non-progress.

In addition, no pre-condition is needed here. That means China doesn't have to renounce its "non-peaceful means" before entering into the talks, thereby removing a thorny obstacle.

Unfortunately, the four-nation conference is a non-starter under present conditions.

The foremost issue is that China does not recognize Taiwan as a country. While formally neither do the US and Japan, they most likely wouldn't mind being seated at the same conference table with Taiwan as long as China doesn't object. But it's inconceivable that China would now agree to sitting down with Taiwan in the company of the US and Japan.

Under this concept, the conference will be attended by China, the US and Japan with Taiwan as the observer. Taiwan can only channel its positions and ideas through the US or Japan. The conference can last indefinitely. Any arrangements agreed upon in the conference regarding Taiwan's future status would have to be approved by the Taiwanese people through one or a series of referendums.

First of all, China will have to be convinced that the cross-strait issue is international in nature. There are signs that, to some degree, China might already have conceded this.

In the last couple of years, it was the US' help China would solicit to rein in Taiwan's democracy. Then, in February of this year, when Japan joined the US in announcing that the Taiwan Strait is a region of "mutual security concern," China didn't protest.

The most telling sign can be found in China's Anti-Secession Law. Since the law refers to the use of force as the last resort, it then follows that, once it was promulgated, China in practicality removed any chance for direct talks between Taiwan and China, leaving an international meeting as the only vehicle for a peaceful conclusion.

Secondly, there must be an incentive to hold the meeting. Presumably none of the three conferees would like to see a military conflict in the region if it can be avoided. Regional peace then emerges as the common incentive for all three.

Third, the US and China must have the tacit agreement to de-link this meeting from that of the North Korea's nuclear armament, lest the cross-strait issue become a bargaining chip in their western Pacific regional power struggle.

Sitting at the confluence of the US' Taiwan Relations Act, China's Anti-Secession Law and the mutual concern of the US-Japan Security Alliance, the cross-strait issue demands to be resolved jointly -- and peacefully -- by those nations that have much to gain -- or lose.

Taiwan's people need help

By Ken Huang

According to a recent nationwide poll, 45 percent of Taiwan's people support Lien Chan's visit to China while 42.5 percent are against it.

The poll result is amazing in the current situation in Taiwan and around the world. It must be the effect of Stockholm Syndrome.

On Aug. 23, 1973, two machine-gun toting criminals entered a bank in Stockholm, Sweden. The two bank robbers held four hostages, three women and one man, for the next 131 hours. The hostages had dynamite strapped to them and were held in a bank vault until they were rescued on Aug. 28.

After their rescue, the hostages exhibited a shocking attitude notwithstanding that they were threatened and abused and feared for their lives for more than five days. In their media interviews, the hostages said they had begun to feel their captors were actually protecting them from the police. One of the female hostages later became engaged to one of the criminals and another started a legal-defense fund to help their captors pay their lawyers. Clearly, the hostages had "bonded" emotionally with their captors. This emotional "bonding" with captors is known as "Stockholm Syndrome" in psychology.

Since 1949 until its defeat in the 2000 election, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has kidnaped, tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese. After half a century of captivity and after becoming a free nation, the Taiwanese are still bonding emotionally with their former captor, the KMT.

The Taiwanese people are confused and need help to heal from the Stockholm Syndrome.

Attaining peace is simple if you capitulate

By Paul Lin

Disregarding the serious domestic conflict in Taiwan, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan set his mind on making his pilgrimage to Beijing. He has dubbed the trip a "visit for peace" and duped the Taiwanese people by posing as an angel of peace. Peace visits don't come cheaper than this: As long as he is willing to capitulate before the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), achieving peace will be the simplest of things.

For years now, Lien and his generation have seen how China has been making military threats at Taiwan, without trying to unite the Taiwanese people in resistance against the enemy, but rather revelling in the disaster and seeing it as paving the way for their "peaceful surrender.

When Lien and his generation have been advocating unification, have they then been advocating having the Taiwanese democracy join the Chinese dictatorship, or the Chinese dictatorship joining the Taiwanese democracy? Having the democracy join the dictatorship, of course. If not, it would have been "a visit for democracy" instead of a "visit for peace. There are two fundamental reasons why Lien does not want a visit for democracy.

First, Taiwan's democratic elections have led to a transition of government, and although the long-time ruler, the KMT, has lost two elections under Lien, he refuses to pass on the leadership, and he also refused to attend President Chen Shui-bian's presidential inauguration. Filled with hatred, Lien has also used the pan-blue camp's legislative majority and ignored national interests by resorting to a scorched-earth policy that has destroyed good things with the bad. This all proves his inability to accept democracy.

Second, if the KMT wants to regain their hold on power, they can wait for future presidential elections. Lien, however, cannot wait too long if he himself wants the top seat, and that is why he must join hands with the communists against Taiwan. He therefore has to accept the ideologies of the CCP's dictatorship, and he will not promote any ideas of democracy and freedom or demand that the CCP adopt political reform.

Even if Lien is given the same presidential treatment as former US president Bill Clinton and is given the opportunity to speak at Peking University, these two points guarantee that he will not follow Clinton in praising the universal virtues of freedom and human rights or criticizing China's persecution of religious followers, minorities or political dissidents.

And by the same token, it is unthinkable that he will promote Taiwan's democracy to the Chinese people. He may even go so far as to label Taiwan's democracy populist, since he was not elected president.

There are many historical examples to back a claim that "peace visits" are deceitful. When, on the eve of World War II, Western countries sold out the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia to Germany in the name of peace, they got not peace, but war. In 1973, then-US secretary of state Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, member of the Vietnamese Communist Party's Politburo, negotiated a ceasefire between the US and North Vietnam for which they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

After Le declined the prize, the Vietnamese broke the peace agreement and by 1975 had captured all of Vietnam. Trying to establish peace with Nazis and Communists is like asking a tiger to hand over its skin -- an impossibility.

If these are international matters, then Lien should feel more at home with Chinese matters and the grudge between the CCP and the KMT. The two instances of CCP-KMT cooperation in the 1920s and the 1930s may lie in the distant past, but let's look at the Double Ten Agreement between the CCP and the KMT that was signed after the end of World War II.

The first article said, concerning the basic guidelines for peaceful nation-building: Both sides acknowledged the war against Japan had come to a successful end, and that a new stage of peaceful nation-building was about to begin that required the joint efforts of both sides, making peace, democracy and unity the first priority. Under the leadership of chairman Chiang, there would be long-term cooperation. Civil war would be avoided, and an independent, free and peaceful new China implementing the three principles of the people would be established.

In order to realize this peace, the US sent General George Marshal to China for three-way negotiations between the KMT, the CCP and the US. Although the Marshal Plan was successful in Europe, the negotiations in China were hijacked by China. Not only was there no peace, but war intensified, killing 8 million of Chiang's bandit troops, while the US ambassador was recalled to Washington.

If the US is encouraging CCP-KMT peace talks for the sake of peace only, they should not forget this 60-year-old lesson. At the time, China's intellectuals were also divided by China's united front. Most believed the CCP's lies about peace, and they suffered for it later. When the CCP had "liberated" China, it did not implement peace. On its own initiative, China entered the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Nor was there peace domestically, as violent political movements leading to the unnatural deaths of 80 million people were used as a means to maintain a hold on power.

Is China today behaving in ways that negate its peace-breaking behavior in those days? If it doesn't, it will of course continue its old ways. Chairman Chiang lost China. Does Chairman Lien really want to lose Taiwan, too? The Taiwanese people can no longer be fooled!