Lu weighs in on Lien-Hu meeting

Vice President Annette Lu makes a gesture while delivering a speech at a Lion's Club meeting in Taipei yesterday. PHOTO: FANG PIN-CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES

Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) yesterday blasted Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan's (連戰) rhetoric and actions in China as undermining Taiwan's overall interests.

Lien's trip to China weakened Taiwan's government, polarized the Taiwanese people, demeaned national sovereignty and created an illusion on an international stage, the vice president said. Her criticism came one day after the meeting between Lien and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤).

During their more than two hour meeting in Beijing on Friday, the two agreed to a five-point "vision for cross-strait peace" based on the so-called "1992 consensus."

According to KMT spokesman Chang Jung-kung (張榮恭) yesterday, no issue relating to China's deployment of ballistic missiles was mentioned during the Lien-Hu meeting.

Stating that China has in recent years continued to boost its annual defense budget, Lu told the audience that the ballistic missiles China has deployed along its southeastern coast within striking distance of Taiwan has grown from two in 1996 to more than 700 now, adding that the number could very well increase to 800 or even a thousand by next year.

"Despite this situation, a demand for the removal of the ballistic missiles was not mentioned in the conversation between Chairman Lien and Mr. Hu, who merely talked about `peace.' This kind of vision of `peace' without substantial content reminds me of Zhang Ying (張穎)," Lu said, referring to a Chinese "magic healer," who, while visiting Taiwan in 2000, claimed she could produce medicine out of thin air.

Zhang was found guilty of fraud in 2002 and sentenced to one year and two months in prison.

Lu said that Lien, despite having served as vice president and premier in Taiwan, had avoided mentioning these facts during his speech at Peking University, nor did he mention the term "Republic of China" (ROC) at all, except when he laid a wreath at Sun Yat-sen's (孫中山) mausoleum in Nanjing.

"The Beijing authorities are the only people in the world who wish to wipe out the ROC," Lu said. "Lien, being the ROC's opposition party leader, who proclaims often he will safeguard the ROC's sovereignty, dared not speak about China's violation of human rights, but twisted Taiwan's democracy as populism in his speech in Peking University."

"When he was asked `what is the thing he wishes to do first upon returning to Taiwan,' he replied that he `hopes all could identify with the country.' To make that statement in Beijing, it is worth contemplating what country he was referring to," the vice president said in a speech at a Lion's Club meeting in Taipei.

She also dismissed the so-called "1992 consensus" on the "one China" principle mentioned in a news statement released after the Lien-Hu talks as non-existent.

Lu then called on the nation's people to heed the situation, stressing that the ROC is an independent, sovereign state whose sovereign rights belong to its 23 million people, and that any changes to the state quo can only be determined by its people.