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Key document on Taiwan is non-binding, says FAPA

"This marks the first time the US government has officially gone on record to elaborate the lack of legally binding power of the Cairo Declaration."

FAPA statement

A key document used by Beijing to justify its claims that Taiwan is a part of China never had any legally binding power, the Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA) said, citing a recent letter from a senior official at the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

Founded in 1982 by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chai Trong-rong (蔡同榮), FAPA is a Washington-based interest group that seeks to build up support in the US for Taiwan independence.

The association said in a statement last week that, according to NARA, the 1943 Cairo Declaration, signed by US president Franklin Roosevelt, British prime minister Winston Churchill and Republic of China (ROC) dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) at the end of WWII, was merely a "communique" and thus non-binding.

Among other provisions, the communique states that Japan shall "return Formosa," or Taiwan, to "the Chinese."

"The document is merely a moment in time," FAPA president CT Lee (李青泰) said in the statement. "[It's] a declaration of intention regarding world affairs among three leaders."

"Although important at the time," he added, "it does not have any legally binding power almost 65 years later enabling either the KMT [Chinese Nationalist Party] or [China] to derive territorial claims from."

In response to a FAPA letter of inquiry as to the declaration's status, NARA assistant archivist for Records Services, Michael Kurtz, wrote in a letter dated June 5 that "the declaration [is] a communique, and does not have treaty series or executive agreement series numbers."

FAPA said that the document's archival status as a "communique" and neither an official agreement nor a treaty, negates any legal claims based on the declaration by China or the KMT that Taiwan is a part of China.

"This marks the first time the US government has officially gone on record to elaborate the lack of legal binding power of the Cairo Declaration, and thus voids the basis of both the KMT's and Beijing's mythic `One China Principle' claims," the association said in the statement.

Despite its status in the US National Archives as a communique, however, the declaration is included in a US State Department publication titled, Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States of America, Kurtz wrote, without explaining the apparent contradiction.
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