Risks seen for Chen's court plan

Allowing the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to decide the count-ry's status, as President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) suggested on Monday, would be taking a big gamble, academics said yesterday.

"If we fail, the court will confirm that Taiwan is part of the People's Republic of China," said Fort Liao (廖福特), an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica's Institute of European and American Studies.

"Since the ruling is final and without appeal, could we bear the result?" he said.

Nevertheless, Liao said, it might still be worth trying.

"While we have to convince a majority of the UN's 191 member states and the 192 member states of the World Health Assembly to gain recognition in those two international organizations, the battlefield in the ICJ is relatively small because there are only 15 elected judges," Liao said.

The biggest challenge, Liao said, is convincing the court that Taiwan meets the requirements to file a case.

"Article 34 of the Statute of the ICJ says that only states may apply to and appear before the court," Liao said. "If we can make the ICJ take our case, we'll be able to prove to the world that we're an independent sovereign state, no matter what the final judgment is."

Since Taiwan is not a member of the UN, Liao said that there are several approaches the government can take.

"One possibility is to deposit with the Registrar of the Court a declaration by which we accept the jurisdiction of the court, undertake to comply with the decision of the court and abide by all the obligations of a member of the UN," Liao said.

According to Liao, there are two kinds of declarations: particular and general. A particular declaration accepts the jurisdiction of the court in a particular dispute or disputes.

A general declaration accepts the court's jurisdiction in all disputes or in a particular class of disputes, including those which may arise in the future.

Since the country is searching for a permanent standing before the ICJ, Liao said a general declaration would be better.

"We stand a good chance of having the declaration validated since the registrar has never rejected such a declaration," Liao said.

Liao, however, said that he expected to see China intervene in the court's validation process, especially now that the court's president is from China.

Robert Chen (陳荔彤), a law professor at the National Taiwan Ocean University, said that the ICJ should take the case because existing international regulations are insufficient to deal with such a thorny issue.

"The government should study the possibility of requesting the ICJ interpret the UN's General Assembly Resolution 2758 to determine Taiwan's legal standing," he said.

The resolution states that the PRC is the only lawful representative of China to the UN and that it is one of the five permanent members of the Security Council.

It also stipulates that all rights to the PRC in the UN should be restored and that representatives of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) should be expelled from the UN and all its organizations which they unlawfully occupy.

"Since the resolution fails to clearly define whether Taiwan is a state, the ICJ may have its own view on the issue," he said.Also See Story:

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