Taiwan's completes 11-day torch relay in UN membership campaign

Nov 3, 2007, 14:38 GMT

Taipei - Taiwan on Saturday completed its 11-day torch relay event aimed at signalling determination to join the United Nations.

The 'Join UN' relay covered 1,200 kilometres and passed through 25 cities and counties.

President Chen Shui-bian led tens of thousands of supporters in welcoming the flaming torch outside the presidential office building, and ran the last hundreds of metres holding the torch.

Chen then used the torch to light a large fire on a makeshift stage, and made a morale-boosting speech to the country that has been in international isolated since Taiwan was expelled from the UN in 1971 and has lived under the shadow of Chinese invasion since 1949 when China and Taiwan split at the end of the Chinese Civil War.

Chen said Taiwan collected 2.68 million signatures from citizens supporting his plan to hold a referendum on joining the UN on March 22, 2008 in a strong public support.

'This is an historic record not only for Taiwan, but also for the world,' he said.

Earlier in the day, Chen told a mass rally in Tainan, in the south, that Taiwan's best weapon against China is not guns or gunpowder, but democracy and democratic referendum.

The torch relay was launched on October 24 to counter the torch relay for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

Taiwan and China split in 1949 when the Republic of China (ROC) government lost the Chinese Civil War to the Communists and fled to Taiwan to set up its government-in-exile.

The ROC government continued to hold China's seat in the UN until 1971 when the UN expelled Taipei to accept Beijing as the legitimate government of China.

Taiwan launched an international campaign to join the UN in 1993 but has failed each year amid opposition from China, one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council which have the veto power.

In September Chen's government submitted an application to join the UN as a new member called Taiwan. The move has triggered sharp reaction from China which sees the request to this name instead of the formal ROC as a as a step towards formal separation from China.

China sees Taiwan as its breakaway province awaiting reunification with the mainland and has warned Taiwan that it will use force if Taipei declares independence or indefinitely delays unification talks.