China fury at Singapore deputy PM trip to Taiwan

China fury at Singapore deputy PM trip to Taiwan

Alice Hung and Jason Szep, Reuters, Taipei/Singapore

Singapore's future prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, has offered to mediate talks between arch-foes Taiwan and China during a visit to the island that has drawn Beijing's ire, a Taiwan newspaper said on Tuesday.

China responded with fury, saying intermediaries were not needed and a trip by Lee in any capacity to Taiwan damaged relations.

The first consequences of China's anger came as Lee was meeting Taiwan leaders, when China's central bank governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, canceled a trip to Singapore, where he had been due to give a lecture on Wednesday.

The prime minister-in-waiting, now deputy prime minister and head of the central bank, voiced his concerns over relations between Taiwan and China -- enemies since they split after a civil war in 1949 -- at a Monday dinner with Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian, Taiwan's China Times said.

"Lee Hsien Loong is very concerned about security in the Taiwan Strait and said Singapore is willing to actively facilitate talks between the two sides," the newspaper quoted unidentified sources as saying.

The presidential office declined to comment.

Lee's father, modern Singapore's founder and Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew, maintains close ties with both China and Taiwan and hosted ice-breaking talks for them in Singapore in 1993.

"As the deputy prime minister of Singapore, it doesn't matter in what capacity or what excuse Lee Hsien-loong uses to visit Taiwan, it seriously violates the Singapore government's promise to support the 'one China' policy and damages the political basis of China-Singapore relations," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue told a news briefing.

"It is also unavoidable that it will produce consequences for relations and cooperation between China and Singapore."

China views Taiwan as a breakaway province that must be brought back to the fold, by force if necessary. Beijing refuses to deal with President Chen, who says Taiwan is an independent state.

Lee's services as an intermediary were not needed, China said.

"The Taiwan issue is China's internal affair. China has never had, nor does it need to have, any country or person to pass messages between the two sides," Zhang said.

Lee's trip, described as private and informal, has been shrouded in secrecy since his arrival on Saturday, with Taiwan officials declining even to say with whom Lee dined.

But he has met all Taiwan's top leaders, including President Chen, opposition Nationalist Party leader Lien Chan, Taipei mayor Ma Ying-jeou and Washington's top envoy, Douglas Paal.

"We talked about issues of mutual concern," Ma said after Lee left for home, but he declined to give more details.

Officials of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the city state's central bank, said they had been notified on Monday that Zhou had canceled his visit.

"We are not aware of the reason," an MAS spokeswoman said.

However, China said contacts could be damaged.

"We believe that, under the current circumstances, it is unavoidable for some important contact in China-Singapore relations to be affected," Zhang said.

Singapore officials were not available to comment on Lee's trip.

Beijing has already expressed "strong dissatisfaction" over Lee's visit and told Singapore it should be prepared to suffer the consequences.

"I don't think anything fundamentally is going to go wrong with Singapore-Chinese relations. I think it will blow over," said Manu Bhaskaran, an analyst and partner in the Washington- based advisory firm Centennial Group.

China is Singapore's second-biggest trading partner, with two- way trade totaling nearly US$40 billion last year.

Lee will replace Goh Chok Tong as prime minister this year in the second leadership transition in Singapore's history. The date has not been announced but the handover is expected next month.