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China fumes at Taiwan's involvement in conference

Protests by China over the presence of nongovernment groups from Taiwan stalled for hours an Asian regional meeting Tuesday to prepare for a UN-sponsored summit on Internet technology.

Talks were delayed for five hours and resumed in the afternoon after a backroom compromise reached between the Japanese organizers and the delegates from China, who said Taiwanese participation was an affront to its "one-China policy."

The point was driven home during the morning, when a Chinese Foreign Ministry official repeatedly banged the table with the nameplate sign for his nation, demanding all talks stop.

"We are talking about Taiwan participation in the name of NGO," said the official, Ke Yousheng. "We are surely against this."

Several hours later, the Japanese chairman of the conference announced that Taiwanese nongovernment organizations or NGOs were no longer taking part in the conference.

"There are no NGOs from Taiwan participating in this conference," Vice-Minister Yoshio Tsukio said without elaborating.

A senior Japanese government official confirmed on the condition of anonymity that China agreed not to kick out the Taiwanese groups on condition they were listed under a Japanese nonprofit organization. A new list of participants was being made, he said.

The three-day meeting at a Tokyo hotel has drawn 37 nations as well as businesses, international organizations and nearly 200 nongovernment groups.

The conference, set to close today, has been trying to hammer out a regional agreement to submit to the World Summit on the Information Society, planned for December in Geneva.

A draft of a Tokyo Declaration distributed to participants calls for affordable and egalitarian access to Internet technology, preservation of cultural diversity in network content, training experts in the region and working toward open and flexible standards.

The declaration is set to be adopted before the meeting ends today. Work on fine-tuning the declaration was moved to a separate room while the compromise was being reached, but other statements from participants were put on hold.

Nongovernment groups issued a statement criticizing attempts to exclude them and stressed the importance of grass-roots views.

Anthony Carlisle, a member of the Asia-Pacific Public Affairs Forum, a Taiwan NGO-networking organization, said the participation of Taiwan groups made sense because the region is relatively advanced in cyber-technology.
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