Chen vows to persist on UN bid

President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday said that only the UN Security Council and General Assembly had the right to consider Taiwan's bid for UN membership, adding that the nation would not be deterred by the UN secretary-general's rejection of the application.

Chen made the remarks after the UN Office of Legal Affairs said in a brief statement posted on the UN Web site on Monday that it had rejected the letter containing Taiwan's request, based on UN Resolution 2758.

The letter, signed by Chen, requested UN membership using the name "Taiwan," a departure from previous applications using the name "Republic of China" (ROC).

The letter was submitted to the UN Secretariat with the sponsorship of two of Taiwan's diplomatic allies -- Swaziland and the Solomon Islands -- last Thursday.

"Not a single person, not even the UN secretary-general, has the right to deal with Taiwan's application for UN membership," Chen said while meeting Paraguayan Minister of Foreign Affairs Ruben Dario Ramirez Lezcano at the Presidential Office.

As with the nation's application for WHO membership, Chen said the 23 million people of Taiwan deserved representation at the UN.

The right to join the UN must not be denied, he said.

In a closed-door meeting with members of the Rotary Club in Taipei later yesterday, Chen vowed to continue pushing for UN membership and for a referendum in tandem with next year's presidential election concerning the nation's UN bid.

He said he realized gaining access to the UN would be difficult because of China's actions to block Taiwan, but added that a first step must be taken.

"We will use every channel possible to broadcast the voices of the Taiwanese to the world," he said. "We want them to know that among the world's 190-odd countries, only Taiwan is not a UN member."

Taiwan does not want to provoke anyone, he said, but it is a country and not a province of the People's Republic of China (PRC).

UN Resolution 2758 resolves the issue of representation of China, but it does not say that Taiwan is part of the PRC, he said.

Dismissing the UN Secretary-General Office's treatment of Taiwan's application as "unfair," "unreasonable" and "unacceptable," Presidential Office spokesman David Lee (李南陽) later said that the government would call on the international community to join the campaign. The government will also continue discussing its application with its diplomatic allies, asking them to call on UN member states to deal fairly with Taiwan's right to representation at the international body, Lee said.

In a bid to safeguard Taiwan's dignity and the rights of the Taiwanese, Lee said the government would persist.

"We will never give up. This is just the beginning," he said.

Kenneth Liao (廖港民), director of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York and the diplomat in charge of pushing Taiwan's UN bid, said in New York that the UN Secretariat should refer Taiwan's request to the Security Council and the General Assembly rather than rejecting the request on its own.

Liao accused UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon of failing to follow the organization's charter in dealing with Taiwan's application.

Liao said that UN Resolution 2758, which was adopted in 1971 and which replaced the ROC with the PRC as the sole representative of China in the UN, did not deal with the question of who represented the Taiwanese.