UN Day made national holiday in Taiwan to promote joining bid

Sep 26, 2007, 7:33 GMT

Taipei - Taiwan on Wednesday declared that it will make UN Day on October 24 a national holiday to tell the world that the island is determined to join the United Nations.

'This year is the first year that we have applied to join the UN under the name of Taiwan. We want to tell the world that we will never give up,' Premier Chang Chun-hsiung told a news conference.

On October 24, the day when the UN Charter was signed in 1945 by 50 UN members, Taiwan will hold an around-the -island Taiwan Join UN Torch Relay to show the world that Taiwanese are united in the UN bid despite threats from China.

China, or the Republic of China (ROC) government, was one of the 50 founding members of the UN. After the ROC lost the Chinese Civil War to the Communists in 1949, it set up a government-in-exile in Taiwan but continued to hold China's seat in the UN. In 1971, the UN expelled the ROC to accept Communist China, or the People's Republic of China (PRC), as the legitimate representative of China.

Taiwan launched an international campaign to rejoin the UN in 1993 under the name of ROC, but has failed each year due to opposition from China.

At the 62nd UN General Assembly which opened on September 18, Taiwan again applied for UN membership as a new country called Taiwan. The UN General Assembly rejected the application citing its one-China policy which says Taiwan is part of China.

But Taiwan, undaunted, said it will keep trying each year until it has succeeded, and will hold a referendum on joining the UN on March 22, 2008.

China has warned that it will see Taiwan's holding the UN referendum as Taipei's first step towards seeking independence and will not sit idle.

To counter Taiwan's UN bid, Lu De, an adviser to the Chinese government, has suggested that China stage a rival referendum as an alternative to waging war to stop Taiwan's seeking independence.

China sees Taiwan as its breakaway province and has warned that it will recover Taiwan by force if Taipei seeks independence or indefinitely delays reunification talks.