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Lee wants peace accord with China

TOKYO: Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui wishes to seek a peace accord with China but doubts Beijing is ready to make any fresh moves, the president was quoted as saying in a Japanese newspaper on Wednesday.

In an interview in Taipei with Japan's pro-Taiwan Sankei Shimbun, Lee suggested his counterpart, Chinese President Jiang Zemin, was not prepared to make moves to improve ties with the island Beijing claims as a rebel province.

"I wish to proceed with a cross-straits peace accord," the newspaper quoted Lee as saying.

"This would be in accord with Jiang Zemin's eight-point proposal," Lee said, referring to a key policy statement the Chinese president made in January 1995.

"It would be of no use to meet Jiang Zemin now," Lee said.

"Military people are exerting power, and (Jiang) cannot contain them," he said.

Lee cited as evidence for Jiang's immobility a recent episode in which the Chinese president was quoted as telling a visiting U.S. official that the storms were over in China-Taiwan ties, then denied the remarks the next day.

"All I can do on relations with the mainland is be broad-minded and wait and see for a while," he said.

"Taiwan will in the long-term seek reunification with mainland China with the conditions that freedom, democracy and social equality (prevail)," Lee said.

Relations between China and Taiwan, which Beijing has regarded as a rebel province since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, became strained after Lee visited the United States last June.

China raised tensions in the region last month with a series of war games and missile tests in waters near Taiwan aimed at intimidating the island's 21 million people before presidential elections.

China claims Lee, overwhelming winner of the March 23 polls, is seeking independence for Taiwan.

Lee denies this, saying he wants only greater international recognition for Taiwan's economic prowess and achievements in establishing democracy.-Reuter