Taiwan leader apologises for history amid unrest

TAIPEI, Feb 28 (Reuters) Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian apologised today to people who were caught up in a massacre 60 years ago, as vandals attacked statues of the man who at the time ruled all of China, including Taiwan.

Chen, appearing with the vice president and the premier at the opening ceremony of a national February 28 Incident memorial hall, apologised to survivors and family members of the deceased for what he described as a delay.

The date refers to the day in 1947 when a Taipei street dispute over the state's cigarette monopoly spread to a chain of protests against Nationalist Chinese rule. As many as 20,000 people were killed in an ensuing crackdown.

''It can be said that this is belated justice,'' Chen said.

''I sincerely represent the government in expressing apologies for making everyone wait so long.'' In two parks and on a university campus in Chen's hometown of southern Tainan, vandals painted slogans on bronze statues of Chiang Kai-shek, who lost the Chinese civil war in 1949 and fled to Taiwan where he ruled until his death in 1975, the United Daily News reported.

Slogans in red paint spelt out ''murderous devil'' and ''2-2-8 massacre'', the newspaper said. Local television today showed the statues, one of which was sprayed to look like it was covered in blood, being cleaned.

Chen's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), founded in 1986, is backed mainly by descendents of Taiwanese who moved to the island from southeastern China hundreds of years ago.

Chen, elected in 2000 and again in 2004, said earlier this week that his comments about the February 28 Incident were not meant to fan hatred between Taiwanese and the 1949 Chinese immigrants.

The DPP also lashed out at China, saying Beijing had ''hurt the feelings of the Taiwan people'' by distorting history.

A spokesman for China's policy-making Taiwan Affairs Office said today the DPP was exploiting the February 28 Incident to divide Taiwan's old-timers and newcomers.

REUTERS PDM RAI1301