New bid, for 8th year in row, to seat Taiwan in UN

August 5, 2000
Web posted at: 10:27 AM HKT (0227 GMT)

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -- For the eighth year in a row, a group of mainly African, Caribbean and Pacific countries has called for the General Assembly to consider U.N. membership for Taiwan.

The move has been defeated at the start of each session of the assembly, which this year opens on Sept. 5.

In a letter to Secretary-General Kofi Annan dated Thursday, representatives of a dozen countries said that, as the tiny south Pacific island nation of Tuvalu was to be admitted to the world body later this year as its 189th member, "the Republic of China on Taiwan will then be the only country in the world that remains excluded from the United Nations."

"Therefore, there is an urgent need to examine this situation from a whole new perspective and redress this mistaken omission," they said.

Referring to Taiwan by the name it formally uses, they added: "The Republic of China is a democratic country and its democratically elected government is the sole legitimate one that can actually represent the interests and wishes of the people of Taiwan in the U.N."

China, which regards Taiwan as a renegade province, reacts fiercely to any move to recognize it as an independent nation and to grant it U.N. membership.

In a letter to Annan on Friday, Chinese U.N. envoy Wang Yingfan charged that the sponsors of the move "attempt to create 'two Chinas' or 'one China, one Taiwan' in this organization."

He called this a flagrant violation of the U.N. Charter and a "brazen challenge to the one-China principles widely recognized by the international community."

"It has severely encroached upon China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and grossly interfered in China's internal affairs," Wang added.

When the Nationalist Chinese government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after being defeated by the communists in a civil war, it continued to hold China's U.N. seat.

But in 1971 the General Assembly expelled Taiwan and gave the seat to the Beijing government.

The sponsors of the latest move to seat Taiwan are: Burkina Faso, Gambia, Grenada, Honduras, Malawi, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Senegal, Solomon Islands and Swaziland. Most of those countries were involved in previous efforts on Taiwan's behalf.

The move to seat Taiwan has been blocked in the assembly's steering committee each year since 1993.

After hearing speakers for and against, the committee invariably decides without a vote that, since opponents outnumber Taiwan's supporters, the item will not be inscribed on the assembly's agenda.

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