Taiwan Leader Calls on U.S. to End Isolation

On the first White House-permitted visit of Taiwan’s top leader to the United States, Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui on Friday called on America and the world community to free his island country from diplomatic isolation.

Lee--in a speech at his alma mater, Cornell University--asserted that Taiwan “does not enjoy the diplomatic recognition that it is due” and said he hoped that his trip will mark the beginning of a new stage in relations between the United States and Taipei.

“We are here to stay,” he declared defiantly to Cornell alumni and hundreds of Taiwanese nationals who traveled to this quaint college town to witness what for them was a historic moment.

The U.S. government severed official ties with Taipei in 1979, bowing to the reality that China is controlled by the Communist regime in Beijing and not the Nationalist government that had fled to Taiwan in 1949.

China considers Taiwan one of its provinces and regards the Nationalist government there as rebelling against central authority.

Although Lee’s trip was approved by the White House, the Clinton Administration says its stance toward China has not changed. The Lee visit, while unofficial, caused tempers to flare in Beijing and threatened to worsen already tense U.S.-China relations.

President Clinton called the Chinese ambassador to the White House on Thursday to assure him that the United States’ “one China” policy had not shifted. But the ambassador told the President that Lee’s visit had “gravely harmed” U.S.-China relations and stressed that the United States should have prevented Lee’s visit, the official New China News Agency said.

White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry observed Friday that “it’s clear that there is not an agreement between the Chinese side and the U.S. side on that issue.”

China postponed a session of missile control talks and canceled a military delegation’s trip to the United States after Clinton approved Lee’s four-day visit, which began in Los Angeles.

Although official Washington all but ignored Lee’s trip to avoid angering Beijing, both those who attended the speech and competing demonstrators outside the gymnasium where it was held clearly perceived it as symbolic of a thaw in Washington’s chilly stance toward Taipei.

*

“It means that the door is now starting to open,” said Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (D-N.Y.), the only U.S. official who was introduced at the speech.

Although Taipei has no official relations with Washington, Taiwan has devoted great effort over the years courting members of Congress and governors, including Clinton when he was Arkansas’ chief executive; Clinton traveled to Taiwan four times before his presidential election.

The several hundred peaceful demonstrators outside Aberding Field House, where Lee spoke, waved three different flags and taunted and argued with each other in English and Chinese.

Waving the flag of the People’s Republic of China, students from mainland China and some Americans of Chinese ancestry called for a united China.

Across the street, several hundred Americans of Taiwanese ancestry waved the green, white and red flag of independent Taiwan and chanted “We are not Chinese,” “Taiwan is an independent country” and “Communists go home!”

A third group displayed the flag now used in Taiwan--the old Nationalist flag of the Republic of China; they shouted support for Lee, who favors eventual reunification of China once the mainland adopts democracy.

One 29-year-old graduate student from Beijing who stood among the red flags of Communist China said Lee would have been welcome at Cornell if he had kept his visit private and had not spoken out politically. “It’s hard to separate private from political when you’re someone like Lee,” the woman said.

After briefly recalling the days from 1965 to 1968 when he was a doctoral candidate in agricultural economics, Lee made it clear that he viewed the trip here as a first step in warmer U.S.-Taiwanese relations.

His experience as a student in the United States taught him much about democracy and inspired his political career in Taiwan, he said. As president, he has spearheaded constitutional reforms that will enable the people of Taiwan to directly elect their president for the first time next spring. After declaring “Communism is dead,” Lee said it was time for mainland China to follow Taiwan’s example in liberalizing its economy, guaranteeing human rights and encouraging political pluralism.

China specialists warned that the Clinton Administration’s decision to let Lee into the United States could raise his expectations and further damage delicate relations with Beijing.

It feeds China’s growing fears, said Bonnie Glaser, a Washington-based consultant on U.S.-Chinese relations, that Washington wants to weaken China by supporting Taiwan’s bid to rejoin the United Nations. “The real significance is that it has set back Sino-American relations,” Glaser said of Lee’s visit.

But people from Taiwan at the speech saw no harm in the event.

“It gives us a lot of publicity,” said Eric Lou, 32, an export-import businessman from Taiwan. “Everyone will know we exist.”

Times staff writer Jim Mann in Washington contributed to this report.