Taiwan's Annette Lu says wants to be president

TAIPEI, Mar 6 (Reuters) Vice President Annette Lu, once jailed for sedition, said today she would seek party nomination to run for president and pledged to cooperate with China as well as pursue nationhood for Taiwan.

Lu, who aims to become Taiwan's first female head of state if the ruling Democratic Progressive Party picks her as a candidate for the March 2008 elections, said she wanted ''constructive engagement'' with China to avoid war.

But she said she would continue current President Chen Shui-bian's 2000 drive to make Taiwan a ''normal country'', a reference to resisting China's sustained effort to crush the island's diplomacy and attempts to join international bodies such as the United Nations.

China has claimed sovereignty over self-ruled Taiwan since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 -- its ''one China policy'', recognised by all but a handful of countries on earth. And Beijing has vowed to bring the self-governed democracy of 23 million people back under mainland rule, by force if necessary.

''The Democratic Progressive Party needs a longer time in power and Annette Lu needs a higher position to complete Taiwan's globalisation and normalisation,'' she told reporters.

Lu, 62, made her name in 1979 for a public speech criticising the government. She spent more about five years in prison for ''violent sedition''.

Vice president since 2000, she has called China's deployment of missiles aimed at Taiwan a form of ''state terrorism,'' prompting China to brand her ''scum of the nation''.

Before declaring her candidacy, Lu said she toured temples -- a traditional grassroots campaign venue -- around Taiwan to seek common people's ideas. On the domestic front, she said she had found a growing income gap plus ''mudslides'' in politics, the economy and public morals.

The DPP, known for its hard line on China and appeal to working-class southern Taiwanese, will choose in mid-May whether to nominate Lu or one of three other contenders -- Premier Su Tseng-chang, former Kaohsiung Mayor Frank Hsieh and Party Chairman Yu Shyi-kun.

Lu, as a woman with her own ideas and a member of a relatively small hard-line faction in her party, lacked support for the nomination, said Andy Chang, a China studies professor at Tamkang University in Taipei.

But her ''international vision'' and rank as vice president would help her get in-house votes, he added.

The nominee will run against popular former Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou, which is expected to receive Nationalist Party backing despite his indictment last month for corruption.

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