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TAIPEI: Exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer has accepted an invitation to visit Taiwan, a group advocating the island's independence from China said on Wednesday.
If Taiwan's government grants a visa to Kadeer, it is likely to infuriate Beijing, which says she is a "criminal" who masterminded ethnic violence in her home region of Xinjiang in northwest China in July.
"Kadeer expressed her thanks for the invitation and said she will certainly visit Taiwan," said Marie Lin of the Taiwan Youth Anti-Communist Corps following a telephone discussion with Kadeer on Tuesday.
"She is a very warm and gentle woman. We hope the Taiwanese people can see for themselves how Beijing attacks its dissidents with lies," she told AFP.
Guts United Taiwan, another pro-independence group which joined the corps in inviting Kadeer, said on Wednesday a representative was now in Washington and was expected to meet the Uighur leader there to finalise the trip.
The invitation hands a dilemma to Taiwan's China-friendly government. China will be angered if Kadeer is granted a visa, while pro-independence groups at home and rights groups abroad will be angered if she is not.
Premier Wu Den-yih would not say Tuesday if the government would permit the visit, but said a decision would be announced by the end of the week.
China is already simmering over the screening this week in Taiwan's second- largest city Kaohsiung of a biopic about Kadeer.
Kadeer, who has lived in exile in the Washington area since being freed from a Chinese prison in 2005, denies orchestrating the July violence. About 200 people died when Uighurs and Han Chinese clashed.
The Kadeer film and a recent visit by exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama to Taiwan have strained cross-strait ties, which have otherwise improved markedly since President Ma Ying-jeou came to power here in 2008.
- AFP/so
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