Randall Schriver in closed-door talks with Wang, Chen

ARMS PACKAGE: KMT chairmanship hopeful Wang Jin-pyng said little about his meeting with the top former US official, other than that Schriver delivered no 'message'

By Ko Shu-ling and Huang Tai-lin

STAFF REPORTERS

"I believe the US is a country that respects other countries' autonomy and [lets them] make their own decisions."－ by Wang Jin-pyng, legislative speaker

Taiwan must respond to the imbalance in military might across the Taiwan Strait and show that it has the determination to defend itself, a former US diplomat said yesterday during a visit to Taiwan.

"The growth of China's military power has caused grave concern in the international community and Taiwan should take notice of the situation and express its resolve to protect itself," Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng quoted former US deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Randall Schriver as saying.

Wang and Schriver talked behind closed doors for about an hour at the legislative compound yesterday morning.

Schriver did not disclose the contents of his conversation with Wang, but said that it was a good discussion and that he learned a lot from Wang -- as he always does when he has a chance to see him.

Wang said Schriver's visit to the legislature was mainly aimed at understanding the progress of the special bill and budget for an arms-procurement plan.

Wang said Schriver did not convey any message from the US government nor set any timetable for the passage of the long-obstructed plan. Neither did Schriver suggest how to deal with the problem, Wang said.

"I believe the US is a country that respects other countries' autonomy and [lets them] make their own decisions," he said.

The government is seeking approval from the legislature to spend NT$410.8 billion (US$12.9 billion) on advanced military equipment from the US. The package includes eight submarines, 12 maritime patrol aircraft and three anti-missile batteries.

The pan-blue camp, however, has consistently obstructed the plan at the legislature's Procedure Committee, the body that sets the legislative agenda.

While opposition parties have said the budget is too expensive and supports buying the items separately, Wang said that Schriver did not comment on the matter, saying only that all three items should be placed on a priority list.

Busy with his campaign for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairmanship, Wang said that the arms procurement plan was a "problem for the future" when asked about how to deal with the issue.

Meanwhile, President Chen Shui-bian decorated Schriver with the Order of the Brilliant Star with Violet Grand Cordon yesterday in recognition of his support for Taiwan and his contribution to promoting Taiwan-US relations.

Schriver, accompanied by his wife Jordan Schriver, said during a ceremony at the Presidential Office that the decoration was a great honor for him, adding that it also marked a recognition of the US government's efforts in promoting substantive relations with Taiwan over the years.

A closed-door conversation between the president and Schriver took place after the ceremony. According to a statement from the Presidential Office, Chen expressed his gratitude to Schriver, who he said was "the first important US official to speak to the media stating the US government's opposition to the [`Anti-Secession'] Law" when China enacted it in March.

Saying it was meaningless for China to make contact with Taiwan's opposition parties and not the Taiwanese government, Chen told his visitors that while political discrepancies remained across the Strait, he would continue pushing for a reopening of cross-strait dialogue with "patience, wisdom and creativity."

When asked by Schriver whether there would be a chance for Chen to meet Chinese President Hu Jintao, Chen said "the decision rests not with me or Taiwan alone but with China's sincerity in resolving mutual issues of concern and with not placing `one China' and the non-existent `1992 consensus' as pre-conditions."

Schriver stepped down from his State Department post in May and now works at a consulting firm run by former US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage.

He arrived in Taiwan on Sunday for his four-day visit at the invitation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Aside from meeting the president, Premier Frank Hsieh and senior officials from the foreign and defense ministries, Schriver has also visited Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan and Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou.

N Korea has to abandon nuclear arms: Rice

SIX-PARTY TALKS: The US secretary of state said Tokyo and Washington agree on the need for concrete progress to be made when the talks resume later this month

AP , TOKYO AND SEOUL

The upcoming six-party talks on North Korean disarmament will fail unless Pyongyang makes a commitment to abandon its nuclear weapons, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday.

"What we really need is a strategic decision on the part of the North that they are indeed ready to give up their nuclear weapons program," Rice told reporters after the meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura in Tokyo.

"Without that, these talks cannot be successful," she said.

She also said Washington strongly supports Japan's efforts to resolve the cases of Japanese kidnapped decades ago by North Korean agents. The North has released five of the victims, but Japan believes other victims may still remain.

"We agreed that there must be an actual progress in the next round of talks, and we expect North Korea's serious and constructive handling," Machimura said. "We also confirmed the importance of close cooperation among Japan, the United States and South Korea on the issue."

Rice also expressed no objections to a South Korean donation of 453,592 tonnes tons of rice to the North, saying the gesture will not undercut the US negotiating position heading into the six-party talks.

Rice said South Korea was responding to "miserable conditions" in North Korea and noted that the US itself in recent days offered 45,395 tonnes of food aid to Pyongyang.

Rice was also scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi later in the day before heading to South Korea.

Despite the call for concessions from the North, Rice pledged the US' commitment to the upcoming talks, which are scheduled to resume the week of July 25 in Beijing.

"We're ready to negotiate seriously. We are prepared to roll up our sleeves and do everything we can to make these talks a success," she said, adding that all of the partners in the talks -- China, South Korea, Russia, Japan and the US -- were aiming toward the common goal of a nuclear-free North Korea.

Ahead of the talks, Japanese officials said Japan, South Korea and the US were trying to arrange three-way talks on North Korea before the broader meetings.

"We believe we should have Japan-US-South Korea talks as soon as possible, and we are currently arranging a date and a venue," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said. "We are hoping to have a meeting by the weekend."

North Korea announced over the weekend that it would end its yearlong boycott of the six-party talks on its nuclear weapons programs.

Meanwhile, South Korea said yesterday that it offered energy aid to the North as an incentive to encourage it to return to nuclear disarmament talks.

Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said Seoul would provide electricity to the North if it agrees to give up nuclear weapons at the revived six-nation arms talks. South Korean officials had previously refused to give details of the aid proposal, which apparently pushed the North to agree over the weekend to end its boycott of the nuclear negotiations.

Senior North Korean officials told a visiting columnist from The New York Times that one of two nuclear reactors the North resumed constructing this year -- which could potentially generate more weapons-grade plutonium -- could be completed this year or next.

"To defend our sovereignty and our system ... we cannot but increase our number of nuclear weapons as a deterrent force," Nicholas Kristof quoted Li Chan-bok, a North Korean army general, as saying.

If the US carries out a military strike to destroy the reactors, Li said the result would be "all-out war" and didn't rule out the use of nuclear weapons, Kristof wrote in a column yesterday.

One true interpretation

By Richard Chapman

With far less knowledge of international law than Amy Chen (Letters, July 8, page 8), I still find something perplexing about the 1945-1949 period and suggest that there can be only one possible interpretation that sits with the widely known attitudes, beliefs and practices of the Allied administration in Asia.

Japanese administration was confined by the victorious Allied powers to the four main islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku as described in the surrender document, plus any other islands that the Allied command structure in Japan deemed appropriate.

From a Japanese point of view, the casualties of this policy did not just include the loss of the Taiwan colony, but also the northern Pacific islands which the US had invaded, a partitioned Korea, the Japanese part of Sakhalin Island which was forfeited and the Kurile islands.

But the basis for Japan's claim on the Kurile group is not the same as the Taiwan question: Tokyo is seeking a final peace treaty with Russia that could include discussion of the administration of the disputed islands.

Neither is it the same as the saber-rattling we see from China over Taiwan. Taiwan and the outlying islands under its control were expressly never on the list of islands authorized by the Allies to be returned to Japanese administration. Certainly there was no act of "commission" and it would require a very long bow to be drawn to say that an act of "omission" occurred. Japan never tried, for example, to sneak back into Taiwan hoping that the Allies would not act.

Therefore, from an Allied perspective, the islands must have been "empty" of sovereignty, with Japanese sovereignty extinguished, unless this sovereignty was asserted by locals or by the Allies themselves, as no one else would be able to assert that sovereignty.

The Republic of China's occupation of the island of Taiwan would therefore have to constitute an "invasion" unless the Allies had expressly given up their rights to the entire Japanese empire unilaterally, which they clearly did not do. If anything, the US military presence in the Chiang Kai-shek period probably had more validity than Chiang's own presence in Taiwan. Chiang's actual presence could only have been brought about with US consent.

This actually leaves the US bearing some of the responsibility for the campaign of terror that occurred during that period -- a situation that has parallels in other US-dominated states.

I imagine that this interpretation would not apply to Kinmen or Matsu, being part of China's Fujian Province. But the settlement of the final status of these islands as well as that of Taiwan must be through an internationally mediated series of talks that can bring a close to outstanding issues from World War II. The term "final status" has been used in many other places, including Israel/Palestine and the Kuriles. It is a term that should give comfort to all parties.

Some people, including Chen, might regard a preoccupation with legalism as impractical and not attuned to regional needs and aspirations.

Yet these people would be the first to join a cheer squad for the Diaoyutais or any other issue that allows them to condemn Japan from the same legalistic approach.

Richard Chapman

Melbourne, Australia

Don't expect politician to lead us

By Michelle Wang

I often feel as if I am living in two different societies. They move in different directions, but sometimes their trajectories intersect.

Full of hope and passion, one of these societies envisions a nation marching toward the status of a normal country, whilst being concerned about political changes it is going through, and the degeneration of politicians pushing this dream further away.

In the other society, politicians play their political games while people in general are preoccupied with their own lifestyles and do not even care about who is serving as president.

These are indeed two parallel societies, but in opinion polls, members of the latter are more commonly interviewed and their answers integrated into statistics. The impression given by the impromptu politics of the second society also influences the expectations of the first. The effects of these opinion polls often cause politicians to make contradictory and confusing moves, sometimes moving forward, and sometimes backward.

A line from Franz Kafka well describes the situation we are currently facing. He said, "There is a goal, but no way; what we call a way is hesitation."

I often feel that it is extremely difficult to turn a high-consumption society into a normal nation, for most people are simply wrapped up in their consumerism and enjoying their lives. Who cares about what a nation is all about? Only sensitive people or people with a sense of mission anxiously ask: "Our country is still illegitimate. Please give me a normal country. What can we do to alter the status quo?"

The more powerful and influential politicians able to initialize the normalization of the nation are also living in the same society as we are. They are also deeply affected by consumerist society, and are gradually turning themselves into consumer goods in their attempts to win the affection of more people.

The predicament that the country is facing requires politicians with imagination, daring and resolution to break through the difficulties or to influence public opinion, in order to speed up political change or move it in a more ideal direction.

However, the political leader that we long expected to be able to achieve this, President Chen Shui-bian, tells us that it cannot be done or that the government will only proceed when it has the support of 75 percent of the population. While we are still at a loss as to what is going on, politicians have already changed their ideals and moved to the center of the political spectrum. I do not know when they started trailing behind consumers and following public opinion.

My head is all in a whirl, and when I think about nation-building, political power and the consumerist society, and how they relate to each other, it occurs to me that Taiwan has yet to become a nation in its own right. The fact that the issue of transitional justice for the White Terror period has yet to be resolved is like a cornered cat staring at me with pupils the shape of daggers.

And if these issues are not dealt with, will they affect our lives? In all honesty probably not, for this is what life is like for the majority of Taiwanese. Nevertheless, if we do choose to ignore this and the problem of the nation's incomplete status, surely we are setting ourselves up for a continuing existence in that illegitimate and shoddily fabricated construct, fooling ourselves and everyone else around us.

If we ignore transitional justice, and the very process of securing apologies and reconciliation between perpetrators and victims, how will we be able to have fairness and a sense of right and wrong in our society, and how will we be able to communicate with each other and live together in a spirit of conciliation?

I am of the opinion that former president Lee Teng-hui missed a significant historical opportunity by not using the considerable political clout and favorable political climate he enjoyed following Taiwan's first democratic elections to deal with the issues of transitional justice and constitutional reform. If he had, the normalization process might have progressed at a faster pace.

It is perhaps precisely because he believed he had achieved too little during his tenure that he has felt compelled to devote his life to Taiwan even after he ceased to be president. His efforts constitute a new high in his political career, and he has aligned himself with the feelings of mainstream Taiwanese, earning him the trust of the populace.

Yet another historical opportunity was missed following the transition of political power to Chen. Trying to attend to the unfinished work of former president Lee and other Taiwanese, he sacrificed the moral high ground by seeking reconciliation and co-existence with throwbacks from the Martial Law period, such as Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan, People First Party Chairman James Soong, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng and Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou. Looking back on the situation five years down the line, we can see that he has paid a desperate price for this, and still hasn't achieved the reconciliation he hoped for.

Looking at Chen's possible political successors among current politicians on either side of the spectrum, I perceive a tendency to play it safe and pander to a consumerist society. What I don't see is anyone likely to push any barriers. The chaos and difficulty that Taiwan is facing today is getting more serious all the time, and we actually need a pioneering political leader who is not continuously looking over his shoulder and worrying about what the future holds.

The current stock of politicians, though, are leaning more and more toward consumerist society and pandering to the media spotlight. They are rushing to place themselves behind mainstream public opinion, and it seems they do not know the significance of the direction that public opinion is moving in.

After five years of uncertainty and being on tenterhooks, we have to ask if the future holds more of the same. Do we really not have any other choice? What else is there to look forward to?

A friend of mine said, "Don't look for too much from the politicians, you should turn your attention to cultivating people power." And this does appear to be the right way to look at it. If politicians are only willing to act after gaining the backing of three-quarters of the population, we should take it upon ourselves, either as individuals or special interest groups, to do what we believe needs to be done. This is the only way we can find an outlet for our anxieties and concerns.

If we are going to be able to breathe freely, if we are going to be able to sleep at night, we need to make ourselves into amateur revolutionaries, and take action.

I am reminded of another line I read which talked of the difficulty of walking along a path, even though it was level. We have already climbed to the top of the hill, and the path before us is flat. Regardless, we are finding it difficult to make headway.

The long night is not yet over, and the flat road remains arduous. Is asking for God's blessing for Taiwan really the best that we can do? No, I don't believe that. We must do something. Think of something. Look into all the possibilities and take advantage of the present, while we still have some passion left.

Michelle Wang is the secretary-general of the Northern Taiwan Society.

Translated by Daniel Cheng and Paul Cooper