Senior Presidential Advisor Koo Kwang-ming (辜寬敏) on Friday said that he had privately received positive responses from Bush administration officials in Washington over full-page ads he placed in newspapers on Monday calling on the US to abandon its "one China" policy.
A US China expert warned, however, that the Bush administration may be shifting its sympathies to Beijing.
Koo is in Washington lobbying for a new Taiwanese Constitution and independence.
On Friday Koo addressed a conference on constitutional reform sponsored by the Center for Taiwan International Relations and other Taiwanese organizations. It was held in a Senate office building.
In an interview during a break in the conference, which former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) had earlier addressed via videoconference, Koo told the Taipei Times that officials and Republican Party leaders he met had "personally" supported the message in the newspaper ads, but could not say so publicly because of pressure from China. Koo declined to say who he spoke with.
"Almost all of them said [the ad] was very good. But in consideration of the reaction from China, they cannot accept my opinion," he said.
Asked whether the officials he spoke with agreed with the ad, Koo said, "Yes, personally. Not all of them, but some of them."
The intent of the ads, Koo said, was to go over the heads of the administration and communicate directly with the American people, because talking to officials was "useless."
He told reporters that he was planning more ads to influence American public opinion.
In the ads, Koo berated the Bush administration for opposing Taiwan's election-day referendum and pressuring President Chen Shui-bian (
Koo warned of eventual conflict between the US and Taiwan if Washington did not change its "one China" policy.
"Sooner or later, I believe that the policy will be changed. Democracy in Taiwan is reaching higher and higher, while the United States still keeps the same position as 30 years ago. So there is a gap growing day by day," Koo said.
"Eventually the gap will be very clear and we will have a very serious conflict between the United States and Taiwan [if US policy does not change]. That is a very miserable situation that we are going to have," he said.
He said that Taiwan "must fight against the United States, because the United States says, `you must not do this, you must not do that,' just like China tries to exert the same pressure on Taiwan."
Koo also took heart from the fact that the State Department "criticized" the ads, saying that this meant the "the ads have had some influence on the department. That's good."
During the conference, a senior US Congress researcher said that the Bush administration would never support an independent Taiwan, short of an unprovoked Chinese military attack.
The researcher, Larry Niksch, the top China expert at the Congressional Research Service, warned that the administration might put Taiwan under pressure to negotiate with China and "accept some part of the one-China principle" as Washington's relations with China improve. He said there would be more such pressure "sooner rather than later."
China's importance to the administration is growing, Niksch said, noting that since January the administration had softened its position on Chinese interference in Hong Kong.
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