At the start of Wednesday's talks, the North requested food aid citing continuing shortages, Kim Chun-shick said. He declined to specify the amount but said it was on par with donations made in previous years.

On Saturday, the North requested 150,000 tons in fertilizer aid from the South, on top of 200,000 tons that it has already received this year. Seoul earlier this year declined to respond to a record request for 500,000 tons, citing previously stalled contacts with the North.

In related news, Kim Jong-il attempted to engage President George W. Bush directly on the nuclear weapons issue three years ago but the administration spurned the overture, two American experts on Asia said on Wednesday.

Writing in the Washington Post, former US ambassador to South Korea Donald Gregg and former journalist Don Oberdorfer expressed concern that Kim's November 2002 initiative was never pursued and urged Bush to respond positively to his current overture, made last week.

When Bush took office in 2001, US officials estimated Pyongyang had fuel for one or two nuclear weapons. Now, that estimate is up to at least half a dozen and, the authors said, "many believe their claim to have fabricated the weapons themselves."

Gregg and Oberdorfer said they visited Pyongyang in November 2002, after then-US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly was there and accused the North of pursuing a secret program of enriching uranium for nuclear weapons.

Gregg and Oberdorfer said while in Pyongyang "we were given a written personal message from Kim to Bush."

Kim stated if the US recognized the North's sovereignty and provided non-aggression assurances "it is our view that we should be able to find a way to resolve the nuclear issue in compliance with the demands of a new century."

Also in the message, Kim further promised "if the United States makes a bold decision, we will respond accordingly," the authors wrote in an opinion piece.

They said they took the message to senior White House and State Department officials and urged them to follow up on Kim's initiative.

But the administration, then planning for the Iraq invasion, "spurned engagement with North Korea," said Gregg and Oberdorfer.

Asylum seeker accuses Canberra, Beijing of deal

REUTERS, SYDNEY

A former Chinese diplomat seeking asylum in Australia broke down and cried at a news conference in Sydney yesterday, saying he believed Canberra and Beijing had agreed to send him back to China.

“I am really scared. I don’t know what to do,” said an emotional Chen Yonglin, the former political affairs consul at the Chinese consulate in Sydney.

“I have witnessed so many under the table deals between the Australian government and Chinese diplomats I truly sense I will be betrayed or sold out by the Australian government,” Chen said.

Chin made public his bid for asylum on June 4 at a Sydney rally to mark the anniversary of the 1989 crushing of Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests in Beijing.

A spokesman for Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said on Wednesday no decision had yet been made on the asylum request, but Chen was not convinced.

“I feel I may have already been sold out. They have reached an agreement to send me back to China,” he said.

He told the rally that Beijing operated some 1,000 spies and informants in Australia and had kidnapped critics and whisked them back to China. Chen said on Wednesday he had no documents to support his spy and kidnap claims.

Chen has said Beijing considers him a threat because he offered help to some democracy activists and Falun Gong practitioners. Falun Gong is an amalgam of religions, meditation and exercises that Beijing considers to be an evil clut.

China has rejected Chin’s spy and kidnap claims, saying he was due to return home after four years in Australia and has made up the stories in order to stay.

Chen initially sought political asylum in May but was rejected by Australia. He is currently seeking an immigration protection visa, which is granted to asylum seekers under the UN Refugees Convention.

Chen, who has been in hiding with his wife and young daughter, said his life has been a “living hell” since leaving the consulate. He said he had decided to hold a news conference because he was desperate for help.

Chen said he was interviewed by an immigration official last Thursday, but had heard nothing since and believed his fate had already been decided.

“I am sandwiched between two major countries,” he said.

“I feel I have no choice [but to go public] because I feel my protection application is going to be rejected,” he said.

How to talk to troubled Australia

By Martin Williams

`Long experience has shown that it is pointless discussing ideology or morality with the Australian government, so one should not waste any more time with Canberra harping on the democratic ideal.'

Virtue may beget democracy, but Australia has proven once more that a democratic state can make a mockery of virtue.

This newspaper's readers are no doubt aware of the increasingly hostile line that Canberra has adopted toward Taipei.

Witness the conduct of Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs Alexander Downer, who, while on a tour of China last year, pleased his audience by effectively blaming Taiwan for being threatened with invasion.

AFP also reported this remarkable Downerism: "I got positive messages back from the Chinese leadership. They didn't say that they were embarking on some military action against Taiwan." This, despite the missiles mushrooming over the way and the perennial threats to launch them -- and Canberra's concurrent warning that it might not help Taiwan in a time of war.

Coming from a model democratic state, Downer's comments were a bitter blow for Taiwanese democrats and a boon to China, and could only encourage Beijing to feel more confident about the result of any military initiative -- thus making it slightly more likely that one will occur.

In damage control of sorts, Australia's deputy representative to Taiwan, Graeme Meehan, wrote to this newspaper objecting to an editorial that criticized both Australian "brown-nosing" and Taiwanese bungling ("MOFA's denials invite contempt," Oct. 4, page 8).

Meehan argued that, "Australia has consistently urged both sides of the Taiwan Strait to avoid any provocative statements or actions that could alter the status quo and put regional security at risk."

Fair enough. But what a pity it is that Meehan's boss seems not to understand this. Have some sympathy for Meehan and his colleagues: though it's their job to do so, Downer's long-standing, well-documented lack of discipline is impossible to defend.

But Canberra's contempt toward Taiwan cannot begin to compare with the circus of viciousness it is running at home.

The reason why Taiwan's struggle to defend its democracy is of little interest to Australia might just be found here, as might Australia's entrenched privileging of economic interests over its contribution to the security and dignity of established democratic nations beyond its shores.

For years, reports of Australia's casual cruelty toward asylum seekers in detention camps have been mystifying.

But then came the Australians who got caught up in the net. A few examples from recent weeks: the detention and probable mistreatment of a mentally ill Australian even after her nationality had been all but established; the deporting to the Philippines of at least one Australian (apparently still suffering injuries from a car accident); and the probable incarceration of at least 200 other Australians as illegal immigrants.

Then, most recently, there was an attempt to deport a mentally ill Bangladeshi man -- without the knowledge of the immigration department's psychiatrist.

All of this has shown up the nature of the bureaucracy that Australian Prime Minister John Howard has adapted and exploited to ensure partisan loyalty.

Some wags will say that such unpleasantness permeates all politics. But the significance of the Australian malaise runs much deeper. Members of the Australian Liberal Party once balanced liberal and conservative perspectives quite happily, espousing human rights and the empowerment of the individual.

Today, such voices are a belatedly brave and small minority. Those who dissent from the Howard Line, be they serving parliamentarians or even former prime ministers, are rewarded with the most withering and violent language of all.

Thus it was that when the misanthropy of Howard and his ministers forced this endangered creature, the "Liberal Party moderate" -- not entirely purged from the party as previously reported -- to prepare alternative immigration legislation and threaten to vote with the opposition, Howard's Praetorian Guard mobilized.

Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) Sophie Panopoulos is one of the most ambitious members of this loose bodyguard, and by necessity a Howard poodle. Last week she labeled the dissatisfied Liberal MPs -- her own colleagues -- "political terrorists" in a calculated use of hyperbole that, tellingly, was not roundly denounced by her colleagues, not even Howard. Such political infantilism is all too common in Taiwan, but it is a worrying sign for Australia that the descent into this filthiest form of politics could benefit a prime minister with a genuine terrorist threat to monitor.

In the last few days, Howard has given some ground to avoid a defection of votes by presenting the Liberal dissidents with a compromise immigration plan and a touchy-feely rhetorical embrace of diversity in his party.

But unlike a number of Australian commentators, I consider it far too early to trumpet the return of the liberal Liberal. The motivation for Howard's reluctant concessions remains as crucial to this situation as the short-term result it generated. It is, in other words, too early to say that this is not Howard's version of the Hundred Flowers Movement, with Howard biding his time until these troublemakers and their outed sympathizers can be gutted in preselection battles.

Underlining the stifling of free speech in the Liberal Party, the Australian parliament's most senior Senate bureaucrat, Harry Evans, on Tuesday described Howard as, in effect, a king. He also said that parliamentary democracy had been usurped.

"We would have to concede our government has become more like an early modern autocracy: the monarch rules from his royal court [the prime minister's office] and while he might consult his courtiers, his will is the law," he wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald. "We no longer have parliamentary government in any meaningful sense of the term."

Predictably, public reaction to this accusation was indifferent.

Equally predictably, Australia's aggression against its own citizens and its own political fabric has evolved into the mocking of principles of democracy and freedom further afield.

In China's case, it started with the de-emphasis on that country's human-rights nightmare. Then came the shameless feting of former Chinese premier and Tiananmen Square Massacre protagonist Li Peng, and lately there has been the ongoing ban on Falun Gong demonstrators from protesting outside the Chinese embassy in Canberra, a ban now subject to legal action.

Lately, things have become markedly more disturbing.

Canberra's reluctance to give refuge to Chinese consular officer Chen Yonglin (陳用林) and other well-placed seekers of political asylum from China is incredible enough, especially given that they claim knowledge of widespread surveillance of Australians by Beijing.

But the revelation that immigration officials allowed Chinese officials to question Chinese asylum-seekers in detention centers has inflicted a terrible injury on Australia's credibility as a free nation.

Australia has dismembered its authority on issues of international justice because its highest officeholders now rely on the systematic use of disingenuousness and injustice in domestic governance. The politicization of everything, the probing of electoral weakness to the very limit, results in the erosion of shared ground for communication, even on basic matters of public morality. That is to say, Australia is heading to the same place from which Taiwan is, in its own cumbersome way, trying to withdraw.

For the Taiwanese, Australia's journey into unenlightened self-interest is not a comforting trend -- appeals for a military defense of democracy no longer have currency in Australia.

Even in Iraq, over which Howard really did go out on a limb supporting Washington, Australian policy is now looking like the symbolic effort that it always was, denuded of the funding and manpower required to make a real difference. Something is seriously wrong when the Australian, a right-leaning newspaper, can report that Canberra's military commitment in the region is an embarrassment, and quotes a senior government source as saying, "We talk the talk but we are doing fucking nothing. We should be doing more in Iraq" ("Combat reality check ... we've already cut and run," Oct. 18, 2004).

This wasn't always the case. The Australian dead of World War II, including members of my family, are testament to that. And even if Vietnam was a misguided and incompetently managed war, the desire to defend the idea of democracy -- as appalling as Ngo Dinh Diem's government was -- from what turned out to be a disastrous communist experiment, and the resulting Australian casualties, give cause for reflection before proceeding to condemn that war effort.

So this is the warning, expressed in the simplest terms possible: If a conflict with China starts, Australia will not help Taiwan. It can't be relied on to even object to Chinese aggression.

Again, this wasn't always the case. Former prime minister Bob Hawke wept publicly when condemning the carnage at Tiananmen Square, and promptly presented a rare gift to Chinese students in Australia at the time: asylum for anyone who wanted it. This was enthusiastically taken up by thousands of young Chinese -- a number of whom now support a Chinese invasion of Taiwan if required, bless their hearts.

Long experience has shown that it is pointless discussing ideology or morality with the Australian government, so one should not waste any more time with Canberra harping on the democratic ideal.

Instead, for what it's worth, the Taiwanese should tell Australians that cross-strait conflict will stick knives deep into the thing that Australians value above all -- their economy. They also need to tell Australians that, make no mistake, the Taiwanese are just as willing to defend their territory as Australians are prepared to defend theirs -- even if this, for the moment, isn't entirely true.

Then there's pride. Australians need to be told that Chinese aggression against Taiwan will do something that the Iraqi theater could never do. It will show up Australia for what it is: a precocious but quite irrelevant military player, except to Indonesia and a few Pacific islands in slow decline. No self-respecting Australian radical right-winger would want that to get out.

Thanks to this series of immigration scandals, which crystallizes the Australian public's long and complicit relationship with Howard's government, something meaningful might emerge: a clearer profile, if you will, of the troubled Australian psyche.

For the Taiwanese, this might prove useful. Sometimes it pays to know as much about your fair-weather friends as your enemies.

Martin Williams is an editor at the Taipei Times.

Show Chen Yonglin and family real democracy

By Yang Chien-hsin

"Oppression makes the wise man mad."

So says the warrior Puccio in Robert Browning's tragedy Luria. If this is the case, then wise people in Australia must be seething with anger at the treatment of Chinese asylum seekers by the Howard administration.

But since there is probably little that people can do to overcome the massive investment Canberra has made in maintaining good trade links with China -- regardless of what Australian officials say -- reasonable solutions must be found elsewhere.

Here is one: Taiwan should offer asylum to Chinese consular officer Chen Yonglin.

This would allow Taiwan to demonstrate once again that it is a vibrant, tolerant and democratic state that respects human rights and carries its share of the burden in the international community.

It would be a magnanimous act to a family that has suffered at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its subsidiary, the Howard government.

But there are also a number of hard-headed, practical reasons why granting Chen Yonglin asylum would benefit Taiwan.

First, it would highlight to the international community the brutal nature of the Chinese regime. Memories are short, and although the "Anti-Secession" Law was passed only months ago, subsequent events -- specifically the visits to China by the leaders of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the People First Party -- have served to defuse the diplomatic furore surrounding its passage. Anything Taiwan can do to remind the world that the CCP is neither benign nor peace-loving is good.

Second, Chen could offer valuable insights regarding the nature of the Chinese intelligence threat that Taiwan is facing.

Third, it would bolster the democracy movement in China. Simple words and gestures can have a galvanizing effect on beleaguered dissident movements. For example, when former US president Ronald Reagan condemned the Soviet Union as an "evil empire," he was excoriated by many observers. But, according to the accounts of a number of Soviet dissidents, these words echoed throughout the Siberian gulags and reminded them that they were not alone.

But this will not be enough.

Given Canberra's willingness to cast aside any semblance of principle as it courts the Chinese economy, it must be taken for granted that a proposal from Taiwan granting asylum to Chen Yonglin would be met with resistance from Canberra.

Therefore, it is probably best not to pursue the idea through the quiet, subtle back channels of diplomacy. After all, Australian Prime Minister John Howard has pimped out Foreign Minister Alexander Downer many times before to act on behalf of Beijing. And since Downer has proven so eager in the past to tell democratic states to shut up, sit down and stop causing problems, there is no reason to involve him or his ministry -- at first.

No, it would be a far better approach to appeal to the people of Australia directly, by making a very public and forthright announcement of Taiwan's willingness to accept the defectors.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) should be sure to note that Taiwan values its relationship with Australia -- the two countries are, after all, both liberal democracies with a long history of diverse cultural influences. MOFA could say that the current quandary Canberra has been placed in filled it with the desire to help, and that it is used to dealing with Beijing and knows how unreasonable it can be.

So since the Howard administration still seems at a loss as to how to resolve this situation, let Taiwan offer its services in the interests of regional cooperation and humanitarianism.

All that is needed is a press conference.

Yang Chien-hsin is a political commentator based in Taipei.