The decision to mothball the National Unification Council (NUC) and National Unification Guidelines was not a change of the cross-strait "status quo," Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) officials said yesterday.
The officials reiterated that the decision was aimed at materializing the principle of sovereignty resting in the people and the democratic spirit that Taiwan's future should be decided by the Taiwanese.
They made the statement after Wang Guangya (王光亞), China's ambassador and permanent representative to the UN, accused Taiwan of advancing its independence agenda and challenging cross-strait peace by ceasing the function of the NUC and the application of its guidelines.
The accusation is included in a letter sent by Wang to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Only recently, Gambia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, the Solomon Islands and Tuvalu also sent a joint letter to the UN to relay Taiwan's position on the issue.
The MOFA officials said Taiwan would not rule out any possibilities with regard to the future development of cross-strait relations, as long as they were consistent with the principle of democracy and respected the public's freedom of choice.
These choices should not be subject to any predetermined conditions or goals, they added.
Also, they said, Taiwan's constitutional re-engineering plan would comply with the operation of democracy and follow a "bottom up, outside in" approach, and any issues violating this process would not be handled.
On China's claim that it will protect the rights of the Taiwanese people, they said this claim did not withstand scrutiny because Beijing was only paying lip service.
They urged China to prove that it was sincere about helping the Taiwanese people, by not blocking Taiwan's bids to join international organizations such as the UN and the WHO or trying to obstruct Taiwan's plans to sign free trade agreements with other countries.
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