MEDIA REACTION: CROSS-STRAIT RELATIONS, MIDDLE EAST

UNCLAS AIT TAIPEI 002585

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR INR/R/MR, EAP/TC, EAP/PA, EAP/PD - SCOTT WALKER
DEPARTMENT PASS AIT/WASHINGTON

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A


TAGS: OPRC KMDR KPAO TW
SUBJECT: MEDIA REACTION: CROSS-STRAIT RELATIONS, MIDDLE EAST



1. Summary: Taiwan's major Chinese-language dailies gave significant
coverage August 2 to a Presidential Office press release Tuesday
which said that President Chen Shui-bian has accepted the
resignation of a housekeeper who works for his daughter but has been
paid out of public funds, adding that the housekeeper will be hired
privately by Chen and her wages for the past five years will be
reimbursed to the government. News coverage also focused on
President Chen's efforts to clarify the details of the Presidential
Office's special state affairs expense account; and a Mainland
Affairs Council decision Tuesday to ease restrictions on visits by
Chinese business travelers. The pro-status quo "China Times" is the
only paper to report on its front page that Cuban strongman Fidel
Castro ceded power to his brother on a temporary basis before
undergoing intestinal surgery.


2. Several papers continued to editorialize on the scandals
allegedly surrounding the First Family. The pro-unification "United
Daily News" said it will dedicate its editorials today and for the
next few days to analyzing and reviewing the prosecutor's indictment
of President Chen's son-in-law in an insider-trading case. An
editorial in the pro-independence "Liberty Times," Taiwan's biggest
daily, urged the DPP administration not to remove the 40 percent cap
on investments on China. An editorial in the limited-circulation,
pro-independence, English-language "Taiwan News," on the other hand,
called on the international community to urge Washington to persuade
Tel Aviv to accept an immediate cease-fire and get out of Lebanon.
End summary.


3. Cross-Strait Relations

"Firmly Opposed to Removing the Cap on Investments in China"

The pro-independence "Liberty Times" [circulation: 600,000]
editorialized (8/2):

"... China is, after all, an enemy country to Taiwan, and its
attempt to annex the island remains unchanged. Taiwan investments
in China have reached four to five percent of the island's GDP,
which already accounted for 71 percent of our nation's overseas
investment rate last year. Such a percentage is evidently too high,
and it indicated that the investments in China have seriously
elbowed out our domestic investments. Since the DPP administration
adopted the 'proactive opening' policy, Taiwan's domestic investment
rate has been lingering around 20 percent, far lower than South
Korea's 29 percent. As a result, the 40 percent cap on Taiwan's
investments on China, ... as proposed by some local scholars, is
actually quite reasonable and meets the goal of the Conference on
Taiwan's Sustainable Development. We hope that in order to
proactively boost domestic investment, the DPP administration will
firmly remain opposed to lowering the ceiling on investment in
China, or it could face serious consequences."


4. Middle East

"World Must Block Israel's Assault on Lebanese People"

The pro-independence, English-language "Taiwan News" [circulation:
20,000] editorialized (8/2):

"... The Israel Defense Force attacks, which Washington continues to
encourage while the United Nations Security Council passes toothless
resolutions against them, are being packaged as 'preventive
retaliation' for rocket attacks by extreme Shiite Islamic guerrillas
or the Hezbollah organization under Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, which
is said to be a 'terrorist' organization that variously carries out
the policies of Syria and Iran or both or perhaps neither. We
condemn the use of violence and the killing of Israeli citizens and
soldiers by Hezbollah forces as well, but the fact that the violence
of the state terror of the IDF against the Lebanese people, which
slays women, children and men indiscriminately and without regard to
their political partisanship, has far exceeded any level that could
be imagined to be either a proportionate 'retaliation' or even a
'preventive' action.

"What this entirely man-made tragedy manifests is the fatal logic of
the conception of 'war against terror' propagated by the United
States government under right-wing Republican President George W.
Bush since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and
Pentagon on September 11, 2001 and under whose bloody mantle Tel
Aviv is conducting its own version of 'terror' against the people of
Lebanon. ... The only power that can exercise the necessary clout
to persuade Tel Aviv to accept an immediate cease-fire and get out
of Lebanon and let the world back in is the United States and its
president. All members of the world democratic community, including
Taiwan, have an unavoidable obligation to humanity to openly call on
Washington to do as soon as possible."

YOUNG