Taiwan

WASHINGTON - Yielding to pressure from President Bush and threats of retaliation from Congress, the European Union has put off plans to lift its arms embargo on China this spring and may not press the issue until next year, U.S. and European officials said yesterday. The officials said that in addition to U.S. pressure, European nations had been shaken by the recent adoption of legislation by the Chinese National People's Congress authorizing the use of force to stop Taiwan from seceding.

NEW DELHI - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice began a six-country swing through Asia yesterday amid escalating rhetoric from North Korea about its nuclear program and mounting tensions between China and Taiwan. Rice said she "refused to get into the psyche of the North Koreans" about their openly hostile words earlier in the day that they would proceed with a nuclear program, and she called on North Korea to end its "nuclear program verifiably and irreversibly." Her trip is intended to advance the six-party talks among the U.S., North Korea, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia to arrest nuclear proliferation in the region.

Taiwan exerts sovereign right to govern itself I commend The Sun for the insight displayed in the editorial "Threatening Taiwan" (March 9). Beijing's so-called Anti-Secession Law illustrates the fundamental difference in values that separate Taiwan and the People's Republic of China today. The drive by Taiwan's democratically elected government to reform that country's constitution is a reflection of the principle of the rule of law that forms the foundation of democracy and human rights around the world and is completely in line with a sovereign nation's right to govern itself.

CHINESE authorities yesterday released the first details of a worrisome new law that is expected to be adopted next week and that pre-authorizes military action against Taiwan in response to potential moves by the island toward independence. The move should be of great concern not only in Washington - which has protested in advance and could easily get drawn into any armed conflict in the Taiwan Strait - but also particularly within the European Union, where pressures have been mounting to lift a longstanding embargo on arms sales to China.

BEIJING - In a flurry of policy pronouncements, China's government slightly softened the language of its warnings to Taiwan and laid out some of the major challenges facing the world's most populous nation as it develops into a global economic powerhouse. The accomplishments have been "outstanding," Premier Wen Jiabao said in a major address yesterday, but the growing gap in lifestyle between increasingly affluent city dwellers and long-suffering peasants and the unemployed has become a larger worry.

SINGAPORE -- Just as the United States and China are trying to work together to solve the nuclear standoff with North Korea, another potential flash point in Asia is threatening to complicate diplomacy: Taiwan. China reacted angrily yesterday to a statement issued by the United States and Japan in which they defined Taiwan as one of their common security concerns. Washington and Tokyo had never before stated joint concern, and China lashed out in reply, calling the remarks "irresponsible" and "untenable."

TOMORROW, IN advance of the Lunar New Year, the first nonstop flights between China and Taiwan in 55 years will take to the air, ferrying thousands of island businessmen home for the Chinese world's biggest holiday and back to their more than $100 billion worth of investments on the mainland. The flights -- only for a three-week period and only for Taiwanese working in China -- are a breakthrough in cross-strait relations. Holiday charters flew in 2003 but had to make an intermediate landing in Hong Kong to maintain the island's policy of no direct transportation ties to the mainland.

TOKYO - An aging politician's desire to visit his alma mater has turned into a diplomatic confrontation between Japan and China, adding one more irritant to an already strained relationship between Asia's biggest powers. Yesterday, Tokyo granted a 15-day tourist visa to former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui, 81, who plans to arrive in Japan on Monday with his wife, daughter and granddaughter for what officials here describe as a private holiday. Lee was one of four Chinese students given a scholarship to attend Kyoto University during Japan's 1895-1945 occupation of Taiwan, and he is expected to visit the school during a vacation scheduled to last until Jan. 2. But Japan's decision to allow Taiwan's fiery former president into the country has angered Beijing.

IN TAIWAN'S legislative elections last weekend, the island's voters handed their president a setback, Beijing's saber-rattlers a victory, and a caught-in-the-middle United States at least a temporary reprieve from escalating cross-strait tensions. Having earlier this year voted their pro-independence President Chen Shui-bian a second term, Taiwanese voters had been expected to accord his Democratic Progressive Party a parliamentary majority. And Mr. Chen then was expected to proceed toward attempting to rewrite the Republic of China's constitution and perhaps even the island's political name to reflect in law its growing de facto independence from China -- potential moves prompting increasingly credible military threats from Beijing.

HONG KONG - Taiwanese voters rejected President Chen Shui-bian's aggressive approach to managing relations with China by not giving his party and its allies a majority in legislative elections yesterday. The stunning defeat for Chen's forces, which opinion polls had not predicted, is certain to lead to a reappraisal of the pace at which the president wants to carve out a national identity for Taiwan that is independent from China's. The results are certain to please China's leaders, who distrust Chen's intentions and have never renounced the threat to invade Taiwan should the island declare itself independent.