Taiwan plans campaign to save seat in U.N.

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32554, 13 March 1971, Page 8

Taiwan plans campaign to save seat in U.N.

(Bg

MICHAEL LITTLEJOHNS,

of Reuters, through N.Z.P.A.)

TAIPEL Nationalist China, shaken by last year’s majority vote in the General Assembly for Peking’s admission to the United Nations, has planned its strategy to head-off a new challenge and preserve its seat in the organisation. Officials in Taipei remain philosophical about the future if Peking does gain entry to international organisations, including the 15-member Security Council, on which Taiwan now sits.

Professor W. Kuo, deputy 1 director of Taipei’s Institute i of International Relations, i said in an interview that

Taiwan’s withdrawal from the United Nations would be immediate if Peking obtained membership. “It would do us no harm to withdraw,” he said.

Professor Kuo added that President Chiang Kai-Shek’s Government “maintains our faith in the principles of the United Nations” and that even the possibility of. withdrawal had no place in pre-

sent strategy. Peking had not formally expressed any wish to enter the United Nations and the initiative had always come

from others. Recently, Algeria and Albania had spearheaded the movement, he said. “We can expect that they (the Communists) will propose a lot of conditions before they will be willing to enter the United Nations.” Noting that Peking would not accept a “two Chinas” solution, whereby Taiwan would retain United Nations membership while China was Jso admitted, he said the Nationalist Government in Taipei also opposed such a compromise. Temporary reverse The first Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs (Mr H. K. Yang) said last year’s 51-49 vote in favour of Peking was only a temporary reverse and Taiwan would regain world support, as it did after the 47-47 vote in 1965. Mr Y. C. Hsueh, who attended the United Nations session in New York after closing down the Ottawa Embassy when Canada recognised die Chinese People’s Republic, blamed the United States in part for the result of the vote. The United States Ambassador (Mr C. Phillips) in his address, had emphasised the need to retain Taipei’s membership rather than oppose Peking’s entry—a tactical mistake that led to many niisinteipretations of American policy, he said. Mr Hsueh is expected soon to become Taiwan’s ambassador to Spain. There and in other West European capitals, Nationalist Chinese diplomats will try to turn aside any tendency to come to terms with Peking. Africa, with 40 United Nations member States, is crucial to Taiwan’s international policy. More than 800 Nationalist Chinese technicians are helping with agricultural or other projects in Africa, and 52 young Africans recently began a sixmonths agricultural seminar in Taiwan run by the sinoAfrican Technical Co-opera-tion Committee. Mr Yang himself spends about three months of every year touring African, countries where technical assistance projects are under way. Taipei’s strategy will aim at reaffirming the United Nations assembly requirement of a two-thirds majority vote for Peking’s entry.