Lee's Tiaoyutai remarks spark opposition outrage

The dispute over the Tiaoyutai islands flared up yesterday as opposition lawmakers vowed to halve former president Lee Teng-hui's (李登輝) retirement benefits for painting the island group as Japanese territory.

Meanwhile, government officials reaffirmed the country's sovereignty over the Tiaoyutais, but sidestepped calls to comment on Lee's statements.

PFP legislative leader Shen Chih-hwei (沈智慧) told a morning news conference her caucus will seek to cut Lee's retirement benefits for next year by half, calling the former president "unworthy of what he is paid."

Shen said she has received many phone calls urging the legislature to withhold some NT$80 million in annual retirement benefits from Lee.

"Why should the country spend so much money on a Japanese," the PFP lawmaker quoted critics as saying of Lee.

On Sunday Lee said for the second time in a month that the Tiaoyutais do not belong to Taiwan or China but are part of Japanese territory. The country has only fishing rights in the waters near the island group, some 200km east of Taiwan and 300km west of the Japanese island of Okinawa, he added.

But Shen disagreed, saying Taiwan is not in a position to negotiate fishing rights there if it has no sovereignty over the Tiaoyutais.

"It is regretful that Lee has insisted on branding the Tiaoyutai islands as Japanese territory," she said. "The country does not need to pay NT$80 million to a former head of state who seems to identify more with Japan than the Republic of China."

The islands, called the Senkakus by the Japanese, have been claimed by Japan since 1895, while Chinese claims are centuries old.

The handover of Okinawa, along with the Tiaoyutais, by the US to Japan in the early 1970s triggered a "Baotiao [protecting Taioyutais] movement" both in Taiwan and China. Since then, skirmishes over jurisdiction of the island group have erupted intermittently.

KMT legislative leader Cheng Feng-shih (鄭逢時) dismissed Lee's remarks as "a bunch of nonsense."

He said that Premier Yu Shyi-kun, while administering Ilan County, sought personally to escort the torch of the national games to the Tiaoyutais.

After the effort was hampered by the presence of Japanese patrol troops, then-DPP lawmaker Cheng Ding-nan (陳定南) issued a strong condemnation of the government for failing to take a more assertive stance on the matter, Cheng Feng-shih recalled.

The KMT legislator challenged the government to respond to the uproar now that the DPP has come to power. Leaders from the PFP and the KMT are slated to meet Thursday for talks on the budget plan.

The premier has said the Tiaoyutais fall under the jurisdiction of Toucheng Township of the Ilan County Government in eastern Taiwan.

However, Yu declined to pass judgment on Lee's opinions, saying he respected individual citizens' right to free speech.

Similarly, Minister of the Interior Yu Cheng-hsien (余政憲) said the Tiaoyutai islands are part of Taiwan's territory and that the government's determination to protect them remains unchanged.