Give Taiwan more space: Negroponte

US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte urged Beijing to be "a little bit more generous toward Taiwan" when Taipei seeks participation in international organizations that do not require statehood.

"Our policy is to counsel restraint on both sides of the Strait, to reiterate our position that this is a question that should be settled by peaceful means, and that no one should do anything that would unilaterally alter the status quo," he said in an interview with the US Council of Foreign Relations on Monday.

"And for its part, one of the things that we urge the People's Republic of China [PRC], is that they shouldn't try to deprive Taiwan of all of its political space," he said.

"For example, there are institutions, global institutions, that don't require being a state to have membership. We think Beijing can afford to be a little bit more generous toward Taiwan in regard to some of those organizations," he said.

"We also are concerned, and expressed our preoccupation, about this military buildup on the PRC's side of the Strait. That's a subject of continual concern as well," he said.

Commenting on Negroponte's remarks while speaking to a group of reporters at the Foreign Press Association in New York, Taiwan's de facto ambassador to Washington Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said on Wednesday that Taiwan and the US shared the same view that Beijing's relentless effort to squeeze Taiwan's international space could trigger conflict across the Taiwan Strait.

Negroponte's remarks were undoubtedly the result of a long-term observation of China's "all-out" oppression of Taiwan, the Central News Agency quoted Wu as saying.

Wu said that many pundits in academic and political circles in the US believed Taiwan's participation in international organizations was a justified issue and that the rights of Taiwanese to be part of international bodies should be respected.

Meanwhile, at a forum on Wednesday on Taiwan's defense capability, a US academic said he believed Taiwan's future would be grim unless the nation could reach a consensus on its relations with China.

John Tkacik, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said that based on the current pace of military expansion on both sides of the Strait, Taiwan was virtually defenseless.

He said that while a majority of Taiwanese politicians advocate opening up trade relations with Beijing, many overlook the fact that allowing Taiwan's high-tech companies to invest in China is basically handing Taiwan's strength to Bei-jing on a silver platter.

Tkacik also questioned the logic of the Bush administration's Taiwan policy.

On one hand, the US government wants Taiwan to purchase weapons to defend itself, but on the other, it opposes Taiwan buying offensive weapons that have the capability of destroying the Chinese military.

Another US academic at the forum, Ted Cato of the Cato Institute, said for the past eight years, the pan-blue camp has been depending on the US for military support.

He said he hoped Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential hopeful Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) would stick to his word when he said he would increase Taiwan's military budget if elected.

Carpenter said there were several benchmarks that could be used to assess China's "friendliness" toward Taiwan if Ma wins office: would Beijing stop deploying missiles pointed at Taiwan, stop suffocating Taiwan's diplomatic space and allow for Taiwan's greater participation in international bodies such as the WHO.