UN chief Ban: UN members consider Taiwan a part of China

Jul 28, 2007, 12:51 GMT

Taipei - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said that Taiwan cannot join the United Nations because UN members consider Taiwan part of China, the Central News Agency (CNA) said on Saturday.

CNA said that Ban made the remark - his first open statement on Taiwan's controversial application for UN membership - on Friday while visiting a US company in San Jose, California.

Ban made the remark in response to a question posed by a CNA reporter about whether a rejection of Taiwan's application would pose a violation of the UN Charter which upholds the principle of 'universality of membership.'

In reply, Ban said when the UN passed Resolution 2758 in 1971 to expel Taipei and accept Beijing, that resolution recognized China as the sole legitimate representative of China and that Taiwan was part of China.

'The UN's decision (on rejecting Taiwan's application) is based on this,' he told CNA, adding that the UN observes the 'one China' policy.

'The status of a UN member must be decided by UN member countries and UN membership is only given to sovereign countries. The current UN stance sees China as the sole sovereign government of China and Taiwan is part of China,' he said.

Taiwan has been the seat of the exiled Republic of China (ROC) since 1949 when the Chinese Nationalists lost the Chinese Civil War and fled to Taiwan.

The Chinese Communists changed China's name to the People's Republic of China (PRC), but the Chinese Nationalist government continued to call itself the ROC and continued to hold China's seat in the UN.

In 1971, the UN General Assembly passed Reslution 2758 to accept the PRC and to expel the ROC, or the Taiwan government.

Since 1993, Taiwan has been launching an international campaign to rejoin the UN under the name of ROC. After failure each year, this year Taiwan is applyinng for UN members as a new nation called 'Taiwan.'

The application, signed by President Chen Shui-bian, was delivered to the UN secretariat by Taiwan's representative office in New York, but was returned unopened to the office.

Undaunted, Taiwan plans to seek a new interpretation of Resolution 2758 - possibly at the International Court of Justice - and to hold a referendum on UN membership in March 2008.

Taiwan leaders claim that Resolution 2758 has solved the issue of China's representative in the UN, but has not solved the issue of Taiwan's representation in the UN because has not even mentioned 'Taiwan.'

Taiwan is a sovereign country and its 23 million people deserve representation in the UN, they said.

Taiwan is currently recognized by only 24 mostly small nations which speak up for UN membership for Taipei each year at the UN General Assembly. But the majority of the 192 UN members have diplomatic ties with China and regard Taiwan as China's breakaway province.