US congressmen will visit Taipei

Eight leaders of the recently formed Congressional Taiwan Caucus will make their inaugural visit to Taipei this week.

The congressmen will visit the city to take part in an international parliamentary meeting on regional security.

A delegation of Taiwanese-Americans will also come to Taipei to promote the campaign to change the name of the nation from the Republic of China to Taiwan.

The Taiwanese-Americans are coming to urge government to change the name of the Taiwan office in Washington from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO) to the Taiwan Representative Office.

The Taiwanese-Americans, who will arrive on Tuesday night, are scheduled to meet with President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) on Wednesday to present 10,000 letters from Taiwanese-Americans to urge for a change of TECRO's name.

During their visit, which will last into the weekend, they plan meet with Minister of Foreign Affairs Eugene Chien (簡又新), Legislative Speaker Chairman Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝).

Later in the week, they expect to meet with the visiting congressmen to try to enlist their support for the TECRO name change and to discuss other aspects of US-Taiwan relations.

The Taiwanese-American delegation is made up of the leaders of 10 Taiwanese associations in the US who generally support Taiwan independence and who are associated with the name rectification campaign, which began last spring.

The groups presented the 10,000 letters to TECRO chief Chen Chien-jen (程建人) in his Washington office last November and received his assurance that he would deliver them to the president when he went to Taiwan for his annual visit later in the month.

But the groups were disappointed with Chen Chien-jen's response to their presentation, so they decided to go to Taiwan on their own.

"We are taking this campaign seriously and we want the authorities in Taiwan, including the president himself, to take this campaign seriously," Bob Yang, the chairman of the World United Formosans for Independence-USA, told the Taipei Times.

"We want to do this in person, to emphasize how important it is to make this change," he said.

The parliamentary security conference, which is expected to attract some 100 parliamentarians from more than a dozen countries from Asia and elsewhere, was announced last July when more than 30 DPP and TSU legislators visited Washington for a three-day stopover at the invitation of the congressional caucus, which was formed in April and now consists of nearly 120 members of the House of Representatives.

While the meeting is regional in scope, it is hosted by Taiwan and the caucus, and is intended to highlight the close relations between the parliamentary bodies of the two countries and promote Taiwan's position in the area.

Discussion topics will include trilateral relations between Taiwan, the US and Japan, free passage of the Taiwan Strait, anti-terrorism, human rights, economics and trade and establishing a mechanism for future interaction and communication.

Chen, whom the caucus members are scheduled to meet separately, will address the closing dinner. As part of the trip, the US congressmen will also meet with a number of Taiwanese political leaders.