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Some are questioning the nation's bid to join the UN

For the 14th consecutive year, the UN slammed the door in Taiwan's face earlier this month, prompting some observers to question the nation's efforts to join the world body. Others, however, said a well-prepared bid and a referendum on the issue might be the password to open the UN's door.

On Sept. 13, one day after Taiwan's bid for a UN seat was rejected for this year, Liu Kin-ming (廖建明), a Washington-based columnist who is also former chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, lashed out at China's unrelenting blockade of Taiwan's efforts to join the UN in an opinion piece published in the New York Sun. Liu urged Taiwan to think over whether it was worth spending so much time and money to join a "a failed organization.

"Among all the factors contributing to the UN as a failed organization, China is a key obstacle. And as long as China remains one of the five permanent members, with veto power, at the Security Council, the UN has no hope of becoming a more decent body," Liu wrote.

"After being rejected by the UN again this year, perhaps the Taiwanese should seriously ask themselves: Is this the club we really want to join?" Liu wrote.

From 2004 to this year, Taiwan's Government Information Office (GIO) has used play-on-word phrases such as "UNhappy," "UNfair" and "UNhuman," to highlight Taiwan's exclusion from the UN in its publicity campaign promoting Taiwan's application to enter the world body. If Taiwan sees the 192-member world body in such a negative way, does Liu have a point?

Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政), director of Soochow University's department of political science, thinks Taiwan should take a more positive attitude, saying it could not limit itself in light of the globalization trend.

Lo said the UN's General Assembly does not represent the entire function of the organization and that Taiwan's most urgent need was to be able to participate in the UN's affiliate organizations.

"We can not underestimate the opportunity cost that Taiwan has to pay. Taiwan forfeits so many chances to join in many international meetings, symposiums and training programs just because we are not a UN member," Lo said. "SARS is a good example in which Taiwan suffered because it lacks membership in the World Health Organization."

If the government had pushed to join in the UN after the Tiananmen Incident in 1989, it might have had a chance to enter the UN in the 1990s, since the whole world was disappointed with the Chinese Communist Party, Lo said.

"No one knows what situations China will go through in the next decade, just like nobody had predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union," Lo said.

To highlight Taiwan's democracy -- the biggest difference between it and China -- President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) proposed holding a referendum to obtain the public's endorsement to apply for UN membership under the name "Taiwan." He added that Taiwan could also apply for a new UN membership rather than to "return" to the UN.

Wu Chih-chung (吳志中), secretary-general of the EU Study Association in Taiwan and an associate professor at Soochow University, said that a referendum could be a concrete way to consolidate public opinion on joining the UN.

The expression of the public's voice through a referendum might open the door to the UN, Wu said.

"But until the country builds up some common ground on national identity, I am worried that a referendum, as Chen proposed, on joining the UN might become another battlefield over pro-independence and pro-unification in Taiwan," Wu said.
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