President Chen Shui-bian (
In the interview, Chen said that the planned referendum would not involve independence, the touchiest issue from the perspective of China. But Beijing has expressed alarm about the precedent of holding any plebiscites on sensitive political topics.
Chen said in the interview that he will consider cancelling the referendum if China has responded with good-will to his calls.
On Wednesday, senior Chinese military officers publicly warned that Taiwan was facing an "abyss of war" and said that China was willing to accept boycotts of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, reduced foreign investment and military casualties to prevent Taiwan from using a referendum to advance the cause of independence.
Chen contended that a referendum would help make people here and countries around the world more aware of what he described as an imminent and growing military threat from China, and that this would reduce the risk of a conflict. "Some argue that holding such a defensive referendum might send our children to the front line," he said. "In fact, the opposite is true."
Chen is seeking re-election and his race with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate, Lien Chan (
Chen said that he had informed the US of his plans for the referendum, and he appealed for support on the grounds that Taiwan's democratic development needed strong US backing.
The State Department has bluntly discouraged Chen from holding a referendum on independence issues. But the administration has yet to respond to his new initiative to focus the referendum on China's military posture, especially as the precise wording has not yet been set.
In an interview late Friday morning, Chen devoted more than an hour to explaining his plans for the referendum. He said that the question posed on ballots "could be for the 23 million people of Taiwan to demand that China immediately withdraw the missiles targeting Taiwan and openly renounce the use of force against Taiwan."
Investing some of the extra money available from a booming economy, China has rapidly increased its arsenal of ballistic missiles and positioned many of them in easy striking range of Taiwan.
Although US and Taiwanese experts believe the missiles to be conventionally armed, Chen compared the danger they posed to Taiwan with the threat faced by the US during the Cuban missile crisis, when the Soviet Union built missile storage and launching facilities in Cuba that could have been used for a nuclear-tipped arsenal.
"In 1962, the US faced the 13 alarming days of the Cuban missile crisis," he said. "With 496 ballistic missiles aimed at the 23 million people of Taiwan, every day for us is an alarming day."
Chen repeatedly spoke of Taiwan's struggle to build a full democracy and called the referendum a historic first for Taiwan. He pointed out that efforts to bring democratic institutions to the island, suppressed for decades under martial law, were always met with opposition from China and the then ruling KMT.
"The holding of a referendum is a milestone in our democratic consolidation and the deepening of Taiwan's democracy," he said.
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