Rain in Taiwan sparks floods, scales back protest

TAIPEI, June 10 (Reuters) Days of torrential rain caused flooding and landslides across Taiwan today that washed away homes, cut roads and derailed a train, stranding hundreds of people.

The heavy rains forced opposition parties to scale back planned protests across the island calling for President Chen Shui-bian to resign over an insider trading scandal involving his son-in-law.

Television footage showed collapsed houses in mountainous areas that had been partially washed away by mudslides. Elsewhere passengers were forced off a train that been swept off the track.

Mudslides severed roads and left hundreds stranded in mountain areas as road crews worked to clear a way through, TV footage showed.

The flooding has yet to cause any deaths on the island, emergency officials say. Across the Taiwan Strait, however, flooding from two weeks of rain has killed at least 93 people in southern China and forced evacuation of more than half a million to higher ground, Beijing's official China Daily said.

Emergency officials in Taipei said that in some areas of the island the rain had eased and flood waters had started to recede.

The main opposition Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) today announced that it had called off demonstrations planned for the southern city of Kaohsiung due to the weather which has forced cancellation of some domestic flights.

''The airport in Kaohsiung was closed, so we had to cancel the protests there, but we will join the protests in Taipei,'' Nationalist spokeswoman Cheng Li-wun said by phone.

Cheng said party chairman Ma Ying-jeou would join a demonstration in the capital later in the day outside the president's office.

That protest is being organised by his political ally, the People First Party, which staged a similar demonstration last weekend.

Opposition parties have heaped pressure on Chen to resign since his son-in-law was detained in May on suspicion of using insider information and dummy accounts to buy shares in a financially troubled real estate developer.

This week the Nationalists agreed to initiate a parliamentary vote to ''recall'' Chen, although it is almost certain to fail as the opposition lacks the two-thirds of seats in the legislature required to hold a referendum on the issue.

REUTERS KD KP1130