Taiwan's Chen says China union still an option

BERLIN, Mar 14 (Reuters) Taiwan still considers reunification with mainland China an option provided it would be peaceful and preserve democracy, President Chen Shui-bian was quoted today as telling a German newspaper.

Last month, Chen scrapped Taiwan's National Unification Council and its 15-year-old unification guidelines, defying warnings from Beijing and Washington. China promptly condemned the move.

''We are not ruling out any options so long as democratic processes are protected and free elections by the people are respected. Unification is an option but by no means the only one,'' Chen said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

For Taiwan's 23 million people, reunification versus independence has always been problematic. Opinion polls consistently show more than 80 per cent of Taiwan people prefer the status quo.

Taiwan's president, with whom Beijing refuses to negotiate directly, said that any Chinese sabre-rattling was unacceptable for Taiwan. Chen has two years left to serve of his second 4-year term.

Chen compared the situation in the Taiwan straits with post-World War Two Germany, which was split into communist East Germany and democratic West Germany until it was reunified in 1990 after the 1989 collapse of the Berlin Wall.

''I don't think that German reunification would have happened if there were 784 missiles in East Germany aimed at West Germany. I don't believe that unification would have been possible if the East German parliament had passed laws similar to China's, which permit reunification by force,'' he was quoted as saying.

Chen was referring to China's anti-secession law, passed in March last year, which legalises the use of force against the self-ruled island, which Beijing considers part of its territory. China and Taiwan split in 1949 at the end of the Chinese civil war.

Washington switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979 and considers the mainland communist authorities as China's sole legitimate government, but it is also obliged by law to help Taiwan defend itself.

REUTERS SI PM1700