Wednesday, September 13, 2006

UNITED NATIONS, (Reuters): China and its allies on Tuesday blocked Taiwan's bid for United Nations membership for the 14th consecutive year, notwithstanding support from Belize, St Kitts and Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Dominican Republic.

A UN committee rejected a proposal to put on the agenda of the 61st UN General Assembly session the "question of the representation and participation of the 23 million people of Taiwan in the United Nations."

The assembly's General Committee, a panel on which all 192 U.N. members have a voice, made the decision by consensus, without a formal vote, a UN official said. The 61st Assembly session officially opened on Tuesday.

China argued orally and in a letter that "Taiwan has been an inseparable part of China's territory since antiquity" and was not an independent nation. Taiwan has formal ties with some 23 nations and a diplomatic presence in 120 countries.

A group of small nations from Central America, the Caribbean, Africa and the Pacific, said in a lengthy document that Taiwan had been governed separately since 1949 and that its exclusion from the United Nations was discriminatory.

"The right to choose how they rule and who rules them, must be the birthright of all people..." Taiwan's supporters wrote, quoting a report from Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Taiwan is a bit larger than Belgium, has a population of more than 23 million people and ranks among the world's largest economies. It woos small nations to support its diplomatic goals with aid grants.

But China, which views Taiwan as a breakaway province that must be brought under its rule, has been even more forceful in making the issue a test of friendship.

The question of UN membership has raged since 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government lost the civil war to the communists on mainland China and fled to Taiwan.

Chiang held on to China's UN seat until 1971, when the General Assembly expelled Taipei and gave the seat to Beijing.

China argues that the 1971 General Assembly decision stipulated unequivocally that Beijing was the only legitimate representative of China in the United Nations.

But Taiwan's supporters say the resolution only determined who represented China but not that Taiwan was part of the People's Republic of China. They say that the new Taiwan has no intention of trying to represent China at the United Nations.

Sponsoring the proposal on behalf of Taiwan were: Belize, Burkina-Faso, El Salvador, Gambia, Honduras, Malawi, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Nicaragua, Palau, St Kitts and Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Sao Tome and Principe, Solomon Islands, Swaziland, Tuvalu, Kiribati and Dominican Republic.

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