Taiwan and the United Nations - Battle for UN admission to be launched again

Taipei's top representative in New York, Andrew Hsia (夏立言), said he's in high spirits despite the predicted failure of Taiwan's ninth UN bid, as the UN steering committee prepares to decide whether to include the "Taiwan issue" on the General Assembly's agenda. (The UN's opening session was abruptly canceled yesterday after the terrorist attack on lower Manhattan that destryed the Twin Towers).

"The most important thing is that the longer you are engaged in this work, the less frustrated you feel, as many countries have encouraged us to continue, especially after we intensified contacts with the international media this year," Hsia told the Taipei Times on Sunday.

On Aug. 15, Hsia gave an interview to CNN in front of UN headquarters to voice Taiwan's yearning to re-enter the UN. China's representative to the UN Wang Ying-fan (王英凡), however, rejected CNN's invitation to be interviewed together with Hsia.

Hsia said Taiwan's UN bid was "not a discussion of the one-China principle but of who represents the 23 million people of Taiwan," adding that "we'll continue the bid as [we're] duty-bound not to turn back."

Reviewing Taiwan's UN bid from 1993, analysts, incumbent and former foreign ministry officials held mixed views on the factors that triggered the drive, as well as the repercussions of the move both at the international and domestic level.

It is Taiwan's democratization, as well as the recognition of the change of nature of the UN, that lead to Taiwan's efforts to rejoin the UN in the early 1990s, analysts and former officials said.

Some DPP lawmakers, including Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), proposed pushing for the UN bid, thus forcing the administrative branch to respond and begin the bid despite recognition of the extreme difficulties involved, said Lin Cheng-yi (林正義), director of the Institute of European and American studies at the Academia Sinica.

Lin Bih-jaw (林碧炤), senior research fellow at the Taiwan Research Institute, who was involved in related feasibility studies for the foreign ministry in 1993 and 1994, held a similar view.

As Taiwan gradually democratized, with the public's international exposure increasing, the people realized it's "unfair" for Taiwan to be excluded from the UN and for Taiwan to be excluded from UN events and publications, the former official under the KMT administration said.

Wu Yu-shan (吳玉山), a political scientist from National Taiwan University, described the government's activities to begin the UN bid as for "domestic consumption" and that the bid was not necessarily in line with "international relations rationality.

"Because it was not a realistic possibility in terms of international relations, one could not expect a good outcome," Wu said.

Given Beijing's view of Taiwan as a breakaway province that must be brought under its rule, Taipei's UN bid is seen by critics as an attempt to revise the status quo, including the international community's lip service to Beijing's one-China principle, thus causing Taiwan's repeated failures in its attempts to rejoin the UN.

But Frederick Chien (錢復), who held the position of ministry of foreign affairs when Taiwan launched its first UN bid, said public insistence was not the only impetus.

He said the increasing importance of the UN as an international institution dealing with trans-national issues directly related to trade and investment, environmental protection, and education and culture, among others, also served to prompt Taiwan's UN efforts, Chien said.