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TAIPEI: Taiwan on Friday played down China's refusal to allow the island to join UN agencies, saying warming ties between the two cross-Strait rivals should not be affected by the "isolated event".
Taiwan this month launched a bid to join the 16 UN Specialised Agencies instead of seeking membership of the world body itself, in a move generally seen as an olive branch to China. But Beijing said it would not accept the attempted compromise.
"This is simply an isolated event," said Wang Yu-chi, spokesman for President Ma Ying-jeou, adding that Ma's diplomatic truce with Beijing would remain unchanged.
"There is no denying that, overall, the cross-strait ties have been warming – as seen in the launching of the first direct flights" in nearly six decades, Wang told AFP.
Ma, of the ruling Kuomintang, has taken a much more conciliatory approach to China than his predecessor Chen Shui-bian, whose pro-independence rhetoric angered Beijing's communist leadership.
However, Wang said Beijing's reaction "indicates that the two sides indeed have a huge gap on the issue. We should step up communication over it".
China's foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters: "As everyone knows, the UN and its specialised agencies are organisations made up of the governments of sovereign nations."
"There is only one China in the world, and Taiwan is part of China."
Taiwan lost its UN seat to China in 1971, and Beijing has blocked its past 15 attempts to return to the world body.
The two sides split in 1949 after a civil war, but China still claims the island as part of its territory and sees any move seeking UN membership as tantamount to independence.
Ma's landslide victory in Taiwan's presidential polls in March over DPP candidate Frank Hsieh triggered the rapprochement between Taipei and Beijing.
Chuang Shuo-han, a legislator with the pro-independence opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), said Ma's call for diplomatic truce with Beijing was "naive".
"It is nothing but a surrender to Beijing," he said.
Taiwanese independence activists plan to take to the capital's streets on Saturday to protest against the Ma administration's policies on China and his failure boost the sagging economy.
- AFP/so
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