August 2, 2000 --- To: Kofi A. Annan, Walter Schwimmer, Hans Christian Kruger

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Dear Mr. Kofi A. Annan,
　　 Mr. Secretary General Walter Schwimmer,
　　 Mr. Deputy Secretary General Hans Christian Kruger,

“After so much progress on key issues, it is unthinkable that the parties would now simply abandon the path to reconciliation and accept a descent into renewed bitterness and strife,” U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on July 30, 2000, urged Israel and the Palestinians to make a renew push for peace and said financial support from Japan was crucial for the success of any part.

Obviously; Mideast summit would effect world’s stability that globalization reveal new era of international tendency.

Vice President Annette Lu said yesterday that the Republic of China’s bid to join the United Nations is not a dream, but rather a “truth and justice.”

Lu, who takes great interest in diplomatic affairs and has devoted much energy to promoting Taiwan’s U.N. bid over the past years, said Taiwan is qualified for a U.N. seat based on the U.N. charter, spirit and U.N. regulations.

“The whole world, however, refuses our U.N. admission simply because of mainland China’s opposition. This is an outright offense to international justice,” Lu stressed.

Against this backdrop, Lu said Taiwan’s U.N. bid is a “truth and justice.” And whether the ROC will continue promoting its U.N. bid rests with its willingness to continue defending justice and verifying truth, she noted.

Lu added that she has never regarded the ROC’s U.N. bid as a dream, because a dream is a wish which can’t be realized.

Lu said she has been invited to attend a summit meeting of women leaders from around the world to be held in South Africa in October. “Even though mainland China has voiced strong opposition to my attendance to the summit and has threatened to cut its diplomatic ties with South Africa, the South African government has so far not yet yielded to Beijing’s demand,” she explained.

The outspoken dissident-turned-politician said South Africa and women leaders of nearly all other African countries have thrown support behind her participation in the planned world forum on women affairs.

“I’m encouraged by their support. So, to date, the door is still open to me. But I may not attend the meeting as I don’t want to bring any trouble to the South African government,” Lu said, adding that the incident can serve as an example to back her claim that Taiwan’s U.N. bid is an act to defend justice and prove truth.

Lu, who is known for her resourcefulness and eloquence, further said it doesn’t matter whether Taiwan’s U.N. bid can succeed or not. “The procedure itself is important and meaningful because what we are pursuing are justice and truth,” she emphasized.

Touching on the new government’s diplomatic policy, Lu said the government should formulate a comprehensive foreign policy and relevant strategies to realize its major policy goals as soon as possible.

Lu said she fully supports President Chen Shui-bian’s upcoming visits to several of the ROC’s Latin American and African allies. “We must cement our relations with our existing diplomatic allies, but we must also work hard to expand cooperative ties with non-allies.”

Lu pointed out that the ROC’s foreign strategy has traditionally placed far more emphasis on relations with the United States than with European and neighboring Asian countries.

“This is nor necessarily a wise strategy,” Lu said, adding that the ROC should devote more efforts to strengthening ties with Japan and South Korea because Taiwan sits on a pivotal position between Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia.

Noting that 12 of the 19 members of incumbent Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Moris Cabinet are friendly toward Taiwan and both Tokyo and Osaka governors have expressed strong interest in forging closer ties with Taiwan. Lu said the new government should not miss this good opportunity of upgrading relations with Japan.

Moreover, Lu said, the South Korean National Assembly has recently decided to set up a diplomatic forum and one of its new parliamentary group’s tasks is to boost relations with Taiwan. “This has provided yet another opportunity for our diplomatic work,” she noted.

In Tibet side; the Dalai Lama has declared he does not want independence for Tibet and is willing to meet Beijing’s security concerns by agreeing to relinquish control of foreign and defense policy to China. Beijing in return should recognize that by giving Tibet genuine autonomy its security and status in the world will not be endangered. If anything it will be enhanced.

But after a long time of exile… “I want to go blow up a few bridges,” says one young Tibetan, who has a college degree, loves MTV and has never seen his homeland. “The Chinese don’t care because we don’t do anything about it.” It’s a common refrain. Some young exiles, after a few beers, wonder aloud why Tibetans can’t be as brutal as the separatist Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka. But come daylight, most of their energies are directed toward more practical affairs, like getting visas for the U.S. There are 120,000 Tibetans in India: the majority were born there. “Two generations have been brought up in exile,” says Tsten Norbu, president of the Tibetan Youth Congress, an exile group. “They don’t have a sense of belonging to Tibet.”

This alienation poses perhaps the biggest risk to Tibetans’ hopes of regaining meaningful autonomy in their homeland. Many young exiles have no patience for the Dalai Lama’s “middle path” of peaceful negotiation, and life in India doesn’t offer many opportunities either. Politics is a controlled affair: much of the government-in-exile is run by the Dalai Lama’s relatives. Religious leaders spend a lot of their time.

Time: The Karmapa is being seen as your heir as leader of the Tibetan people. Is that how you view him?

Dalai Lama: Not in that way. But I have told him --- and I have said this publicly --- that my generation is growing old, and the time has come to prepare the next generation of spiritual leaders. The Karmapa is one of the important leaders, especially for the Kagyu sect. There are some bright young lamas in other sects, too.

Time: There seems to be conflict these days within Tibetan Buddhism.

Dalai Lama: Tibetan history is over 1,000 years old. We have always had six or eight problem monks. There have always been mischief-makers. But Westerners think that everything about Tibet is very good. Then there is some trouble, and their image of Tibet changes completely.

Time: There is also conflict because Tibetan people are growing impatient of waiting to return to their homeland. Should you change your position in relation to China?

Dalai Lama: Despite all the setbacks, my position has not changed. I am fully committed to the middle path. Yes, from an individual’s point of view, 40 years is quite a long time --- it is one lifetime. But for a nation’s history, 40 or 50 years is nothing. Our cause is just. Even though the result may not materialize in one’s own lifetime, the struggle for the preservation of our culture and spirituality is worthwhile.

Face the new Tibet in mainland that swamping Tibetan culture is probably a better description. In the so-called Tibetan Autonomous Region, ethnic Tibetans now numbers 6 million, or only 44% of the population, according to the Dalai Lama’s government-in-exile. China disputes those figures, but its own census data is from 1990, before the most recent waves of Han Chinese immigrants.

Contrary to mainland side; there is no campaign. No new slogans have been launched, though President Jiang Zemin regularly rails against society’s “poisonous weeds,” which can refer to any high-profile display of free expression, from articles denouncing corruption to racy novels and films. The crackdown follows a period of relative lenience, particularly for academics critiquing China’ economy and society. And that is the Chinese pattern. “Repression in China flows in and out like the tide,” says Liu Qing, who spent 10 years in Chinese jails as a political prisoner and now runs the New York City-based group Human Rights in China. “It’s always present. It’s just that sometimes it’s enforced gently and sometimes severely.”

The tides always have political under-currents, and there are several in today’s China. Most obvious is the leadership’s jitters in advance of the 16^th Communist Party Congress to be held 25 months from now at which Jiang’s successor will probably be named. “Those who wish to remain in power,” says Liu, now a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, “want to show they’re not breaking ranks from the orthodox ideology and, in fact are protecting it.”

It’s indeed unfortunate Beijing is using every opportunity to downgrade Taiwan into a local government under the PRC, and regard Taiwan as another Hong Kong. This is unacceptable not only to Taiwan, but also to many other WTO member countries.

The prospects for peace between Taiwan and mainland China are far less rosy. The stalled cross-strait peace talks have not been resumed yet, and when the talks will restart is anyone’s guess. Many people doubt the differences between the two sides can even be peacefully resolved.

Beijing’s bossy attitude and its irrational insistence that the Republic of China government is a mere local government are unacceptable to the vast majority of the people of Taiwan as well as the ROC government.

The differences in opinion between the leaders on the two sides thus appear unsolvable. This has made many people pessimistic about what will happen in the long run.

The differences are not unresolvable, in our view. Peace in the Taiwan Strait is an issue that bears on the well-being of all Chinese and much of the world community. The rulers in Beijing should wise up to the fact that Taiwan will not accept the proposal that the ROC, which has its own Constitution and elected leaders, be made a part of the PRC-controlled territory.