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Taiwan issues low on Hu-Bush agenda

The North Korean standoff will overshadow the Taiwan issue when US President George W. Bush meets Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) on the sidelines of the G8 summit in Evian, France, this weekend, according to China specialists in Washington.

Bush does not plan to bring up issues regarding Taiwan when he meets Hu in a meeting scheduled for this evening. But it is widely assumed that Hu will bring up the issue, as Chinese leaders do every time they hold a summit with the US president.

"You cannot avoid Taiwan in a meeting like this, because it is hard for a Chinese leader not to bring it up," said Richard Bush, former director of the American Institute in Taiwan and now director of the Center for Northeast Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institute.

However, he said, "I think it will be done in a way in which there aren't any surprises."

Such meetings are brief, he said, so "there's a limit to how much time you can devote to any of these secondary or tertiary issues."

If Hu raises Taiwan, said John Tkacik, research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the US president "is likely to simply state his own case on Taiwan and move on."

Hu might try to elicit from Bush some sort of restatement of the so-called "three nos" that then-president Bill Clinton pledged in Shanghai after his Beijing summit with President Jiang Zemin (江澤民) in June, 1998. These were America's opposition to Taiwan independence, two Chinas and Taiwan membership in international organizations requiring statehood.

But the American side will reject the demand, Washington observers said.

Jiang's reported offer to remove missiles from the Taiwan Strait in exchange for a halt to US arms transfers to Taiwan, which he made during last October's summit at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, is likely not come up at the Evian meeting, specialists said.

Observers said that the US administration has already responded to that offer -- suggesting that Beijing bring up the matter directly with Taipei.

In addition, Tkacik said, the response probably also said that "the Chinese offer is a positive step because it shows that China understands its behavior is leading to Taiwan's increased arms purchases. But that is where it stops."

Discussions on other trilateral issues, such as those related to the WTO, the World Health Organization and SARS, are also likely to be shelved as the leaders focus on North Korea.

"I think Korea is really important and really dangerous, and everything else pales in significance," Bush said.

Hu may also press the US for concessions on Taiwan in exchange for help in getting North Korea to end its nuclear weapons program, but it will fail, specialists said.

"They might ask, but they're not going to get it," Bush said.

The Evian meeting will be Hu's first face-to-face session with the US president since he visited Washington in April last year as vice president.

The Taiwan issued played a relatively large part of those discussions, with Bush reportedly warning Hu strongly about China's missile buildup aimed at Taiwan.

Since that meeting, the war on Iraq, continued terrorist worries and North Korea's weapons program have pushed Taiwanese issues down the agenda.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell, for example, didn't mention Taiwan in a speech to the US Asia Pacific Council last month regarding US-China relations.

US officials insist that relations with Taiwan had not been affected by improving US-China ties, and Taiwanese representatives say US-Taiwan ties are as good as they have been in years.
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