Taiwan invited to HK handover with conditios

Taiwan invited to HK handover with conditios

BEIJING (Reuter): China issued a conditional invitation yesterday to representatives from island arch-rival Taiwan to attend a glittering ceremony for the return of the British colony of Hong Kong to Beijing rule on June 30.

Taiwan residents chosen to witness the historic end of 156 years of colonial rule in Hong Kong would have to approve of the territory's return and to accept that Taiwan was part of China, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Shen Guofang.

"We will invite Taiwan people to attend," Shen told a news briefing. "But they must conform to the principle of 'One China'.

"Those invited must uphold China's resumption of sovereignty over Hong Kong," he said, but gave no details of who was likely to be chosen from Taiwan to join more than 4,000 guests at the 45-minute formal handover ceremony.

Communist-ruled China has regarded Taiwan as a rebel province since 1949, when defeated Nationalist forces took refuge on the island after years of civil war.

Beijing, which reserves the right to invade Taiwan if it ever declares formal independence, has repeatedly demanded the island's leaders accept the principle of 'One China' and prove their intention to eventually reunify with the mainland.

While Taipei's Nationalist government is publicly committed to reunification, Beijing accuses it of secretly favoring succession and has broken off semi-official talks aimed at improving relations across the narrow Taiwan Strait.

Shen said the guest list for the glitzy Hong Kong handover, scheduled to begin at about 11.30 p.m. (1530 GMT) on June 30, had been basically decided. He gave no details.

Guests to the ceremony in the grand hall of Hong Kong's new Convention and Exhibition will see the slow lowering of Britain's Union Jack flag and its colonial Hong Kong flag as midnight approaches, Chinese state media have said.

At the stroke of midnight, China's scarlet five-starred national flag and the flag of the new Hong Kong Special Administration Region will be raised.

An official of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office in Beijing declined to comment on who would represent Taiwan at the ceremony or how they would be invited.

"This is currently a secret," the official said.

A Beijing-backed newspaper in Hong Kong reported in March that China planned to invite the chairman of Taiwan's quasi-official Straits Exchange Foundation, Koo Chen-fu.

The foundation and its mainland counterpart, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, have been used by Beijing and Taipei as a way to negotiate without breaking their ban on direct official contacts.

Even such semi-official talks stalled in June 1995 after Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui enraged Beijing by making a landmark private visit to the United States, but tensions have eased recently.

On Wednesday, Straits Exchange Foundation officials made a rare direct sailing to mainland China to take custody of a man accused of hijacking an airliner from the island in March.