Jan. 15, 2000 ---

President Lee Teng-hui is scheduled to deliver a videotaped speech next Wednesday to hundreds of conservative political leaders at a gathering in Crystal City, Virginia. It is shaping up to be an event that has officials at the Chinese Embassy in Washington worried that he will use the occasion to send out a new message directly to the US public --- this time, without the need for a visa from the State Department.

The Conservative Political Action Conference invited President Lee to be its keynote speaker this year. Knowing it would be impossible to gain a US visa, Lee apparently decided instead to present a 10-minute videotape expressing his views on democracy, US-Taiwan relations, and the coming presidential election in Taiwan.

Conference chairman David A. Keene told the Taipei Times that “this will be one of the most important speeches given in the 27 years of CPAC.”

“We have not received the tape yet, but we think people will be interested in seeing it. President Lee is going to deliver a significant message,” said one official from the Washington branch of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, Taiwan’s unofficial diplomatic mission in the US.

Chinese officials were expectedly not quite so upbeat. “We oppose strongly the tactics of any organization to provide a forum for Lee Teng-hui to preach his two-Chinas or one-China, one Taiwan theory in this country,” Chinese embassy spokesman Yu Shu-ning told the Washington Times in a story to be published today.