N Korea says no chance of talks until mid-month

DELAY: War exercises the US and South Korea are holding make it impossible for the North to hold talks with the US before then, a foreign ministry official said

AFP , SEOUL

Communist North Korea said yesterday it would not return to six-nation talks on its nuclear program until the week of Sept. 12, blaming the delay on military exercises between the US and South Korea.

A foreign ministry spokesman quoted by the official KCNA news agency said the delay in the discussions, which had been due to resume in Beijing this week, was due to the war games which he likened to "spitting" at the North.

"It is unimaginable for [North Korea] to sit at the negotiating table with the United States at a time when the powder-reeking war exercises targeted against it are under way," the spokesman said.

He said Pyongyang wanted to resume the talks during the week of Sept. 12 when the dust had settled from the annual war games, which began on Aug. 22 and which North Korea has said could be a trial run for an invasion.

The spokesman said the US had been told of the decision through the UN's mission in New York, and Pyongyang was showing the "utmost magnanimity" in offering to re-open the talks in the middle of next month.

He blasted the war games as well as US President George W. Bush's decision to appoint an envoy for human rights in the secretive Stalinist regime, which has said it has nuclear weapons and must build more to stop US aggression.

A fourth round of negotiations on Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions involving the two Koreas, China, the US, Japan and Russia broke up on Aug. 7 after 13 days of intense and sometimes fiery discussions.

All six sides had agreed to meet again this week, after the talks recessed at an apparent impasse over the North's demand to be allowed to use nuclear power for peaceful, civilian energy purposes -- something Washington rejected.

"The important thing is all the parties agreed to resume the talks and we all have kept contact and negotiation in the framework of the six-party talks," China's Deputy Foreign Minister Wu Dawei told Xinhua news agency.

North Korea has long caused concern in Washington and among its regional neighbors with its nuclear program. It raised the stakes in February by declaring it had produced atomic bombs and would manufacture more.

Bush in the past has named North Korea as part of an "axis of evil" while Pyongyang has labeled the US an imperialist aggressor nation and worse, accusing it of planning an invasion.

International talks on defusing the crisis on the Korean Peninsula resumed last month after the war of words between Washington and Pyongyang had led to a break of more than one year.

UN’s China trip focuses on abuses

TIMETABLE: The UN Commissioner for Human Rights will visit China this week to discuss reforms of the legal system, including police torture and the death penalty

REUTERS, BEIJING

China's widely criticized justice system, including police torture, arbitrary courts and heavy use of the death penalty, will be the focus of the UN human rights chief’s visit this week to the world’s most populous nation.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour is due to meet China's justice minister today and the head of the Supreme Court on Thursday to discuss reforms to the legal system needed before Beijing could ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a UN spokesman said.

China signed the covenant, .a cornerstone of global rights law, in 1998 to coincide with the first visit by a UN high commissioner, but has yet to join 154 other countries fn ratifying it.

"The high commissioner would like to at least see some kind of timetable for ratification of the covenant," Jose Diaz, a spokesman from Arbour's office, said by telephone in Beijing.

"There still needs to be quite a few ages or reforms to the [justice] system in order for China to be able to be in compliance with the covenant on political rights. "

Topics Arbour would raise with Chinese officials would include China's system of Lao Gai or "reeducation through labor" and its use of the death penalty, Diaz said.

China has talked this year about reforming Lao Gai, a program introduced in 1957 that allows government critics to be sent to labor camps for up to four years without tacit.

The reforms would mean that inmates could ale appeals and could not be held for more than 18 months in such camp. The Xinhua liament state news agency bas said there are about 26,000 people in Lao Gai camps. China has the biggest prison population in the world with 1.5 million inmates held in 670 jails. Rights groups have long criticized China's judicial system, which is seen as subordinate to the ruling Communist Patty and an instrument to maintain its grip on power.

On Tuesday Arbour is due to follow a Chinese suggestion and visit the Sunshine correctional facility, which Diaz said China considered "an exemplary center for rehabilitating people."

Chinese courts, police and prisons have come, under closer public scrutiny this year after a series of high profile wrongful convictions, including a butcher executed for murder in 1989 and proven innocent when the "victim" turned up alive this June. More people－up to 12,000－are put to death in China each year than the rest of the world combined, rights groups say.

Over the weekend, China’s parliament passed a bill mandating punishment for policemen who torture detainees during interrogation and commit other offenses.

Diaz said that while China had made some moves to improve human rights, the country was still not in a position to adopt the UN covenant and Arbour would appeal to Beijing to improve its record and adopt international advice.

"There has been progress, but I think everyone would acknowledge there is quite a bit that needs to be done," Diaz said. "That's why she is here."

Arbour, a former international war crimes prosecutor, arrived in China yesterday and is to stay until Friday.

The previous UN high commissioner for human rights, Mary Robinson, made seven trips to China, the last in 2002.

The US decided against seeking censure of Beijing at this year's session of the UN Commission on Human Rights as it felt some progress had been made.

'Taiwan discourse' is misdirected

By Ku Er-teh

After being elected chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), Ma Ying-jeou has suggested quite a few novel reforms that have won the approval of KMT members. When he proposed a Taiwan discourse for the KMT, however, it was met with mixed reactions from KMT supporters.

The major difference between Ma's Taiwan discourse and former KMT chairman and president Lee Teng-hui's localization discourse is that the latter recognized the KMT as being a foreign ruler and also took concrete measures to speed up the localization of that foreign ruler.

The measures included promoting local Taiwanese to leading positions in both the party and government, defining the nation as the Republic of China on Taiwan, and amending the Constitution to define the nation's scope and sovereignty. Ma, on the other hand, wants to return to the source to try to find a connection between the KMT and Taiwan, an approach which includes mentioning Chiang Wei-shui  -- a Taiwanese social activist during the Japanese era -- who was a member of the KMT's precursor, the Kuomingtang or Revolutionary Party, as well as Sun Yat-sen's visit to Taiwan.

This may seem a thorough approach, but there is a risk that it may blur the focus and lead to too much talking. Sun started his revolution from abroad. He studied abroad and overseas Chinese associations were important early supporters of the revolution. If the participation in, or support for, Sun's revolution by individual Taiwanese is used to prove that there is a historical foundation for the relationship between the KMT and Taiwan, then the KMT has an even closer relationship with overseas associations in Hawaii or Japan. That does not mean, however, that we should call the KMT a local Hawaiian or Japanese party.

Another historical fact that cannot be denied is that the early 20th century was an era of revolution, in particular following the success of the Russian revolution, which resulted in an international revolutionary network. China's leftist revolutionary parties, Japan's leftist parties and even Taiwan's communist party were connected through this network. The KMT's close relationship with the Soviet Communist Party following the success of the KMT's revolution does not mean that the KMT was an appendix to the Soviet Communist Party or that the Soviet Communist Party was a localized Chinese party.

Private and commercial exchanges across the Taiwan Strait were not interrupted during the Japanese era. Such exchanges, however, are not sufficient to claim a political relationship across the Strait. The factors that really affected the cross-strait political relationship during the latter part of the 20th century were instead the outcome of World War II and the Chinese civil war.

The ethnic, cultural and geopolitical situation led to the natural development of cross-strait interactions that were destroyed only after the KMT arrived in Taiwan. For Taiwan at that time, the KMT was indeed a foreign government whose leadership included only a few Taiwanese. It was only later that it slowly absorbed the local elite and formed a network to control local politics.

A more reasonable explanation would be to say that after the KMT came to Taiwan and ended cross-strait exchanges it was as a foreign ruler that was forced to begin a localization process. The Cold War not only severed interaction between Taiwan and China, it also severed interaction between Taiwan's rulers and their mother country. Although the government continued to claim that the central plains of China were the center of the nation, the concrete foundation of its existence was Taiwan, and that was where it had to set root and localize.

Speaking historically, Lee's foreign government and localization discourses have more explanatory power than Ma's Taiwan discourse. The vigorous localization drive during Lee's presidency led to conflicts within the KMT's internal power distribution. These conflicts developed into contradictory national identities. The struggle between the mainstream and the fringe within the party, the creation of the New Party and even the recent KMT chairmanship election, reflect this conflict.

Ma obviously proposed his Taiwan discourse because he has realized that this conflict must be resolved. However, maybe that resolution should not involve returning to Sun, but rather finding a solution to the conflict that has followed from the localization process. This conflict is no longer restricted to the political elite, but has spread to society at large.

Today, many Taiwanese see the concepts "localization," "love Taiwan" and "self awareness" as being negative. Those dissatisfied with the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) rule have channeled that dissatisfaction toward smearing the image of Taiwan. In contrast to the government's vigorous promotion of positive news about Taiwan and its predictions about the demise of China, those dissatisfied with the government propagate negative news about Taiwan and loudly praise China's advances. This perverted mindset has already spread through a large segment of society, and it is also the reason Ma's Taiwan discourse proposition was not welcomed by pan-blue voters.

Without local self-awareness and a love for Taiwan, there can be no healthy and active development of cross-strait relations, or a healthy and active way of dealing with the international community. Ma's Taiwan discourse should be directed toward rebuilding the public's concern and affection for Taiwan.

Ku Er-teh is a freelance writer.