VZCZCXYZ0011
RR RUEHWEB

DE RUEHIN #2585 2140720
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 020720Z AUG 06
FM AIT TAIPEI
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 1369
INFO RUEHBJ/AMEMBASSY BEIJING 5505
RUEHHK/AMCONSUL HONG KONG 6713

UNCLAS AIT TAIPEI 002585 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR INR/R/MR, EAP/TC, EAP/PA, EAP/PD - SCOTT WALKER 
DEPARTMENT PASS AIT/WASHINGTON 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
 
 
TAGS: OPRC KMDR KPAO TW
SUBJECT: MEDIA REACTION: CROSS-STRAIT RELATIONS, MIDDLE EAST 
 
 
¶1. Summary: Taiwan's major Chinese-language dailies gave significant 
coverage August 2 to a Presidential Office press release Tuesday 
which said that President Chen Shui-bian has accepted the 
resignation of a housekeeper who works for his daughter but has been 
paid out of public funds, adding that the housekeeper will be hired 
privately by Chen and her wages for the past five years will be 
reimbursed to the government.  News coverage also focused on 
President Chen's efforts to clarify the details of the Presidential 
Office's special state affairs expense account; and a Mainland 
Affairs Council decision Tuesday to ease restrictions on visits by 
Chinese business travelers.  The pro-status quo "China Times" is the 
only paper to report on its front page that Cuban strongman Fidel 
Castro ceded power to his brother on a temporary basis before 
undergoing intestinal surgery. 
 
¶2. Several papers continued to editorialize on the scandals 
allegedly surrounding the First Family.  The pro-unification "United 
Daily News" said it will dedicate its editorials today and for the 
next few days to analyzing and reviewing the prosecutor's indictment 
of President Chen's son-in-law in an insider-trading case.  An 
editorial in the pro-independence "Liberty Times," Taiwan's biggest 
daily, urged the DPP administration not to remove the 40 percent cap 
on investments on China.  An editorial in the limited-circulation, 
pro-independence, English-language "Taiwan News," on the other hand, 
called on the international community to urge Washington to persuade 
Tel Aviv to accept an immediate cease-fire and get out of Lebanon. 
End summary. 
 
¶3. Cross-Strait Relations 
 
"Firmly Opposed to Removing the Cap on Investments in China" 
 
The pro-independence "Liberty Times" [circulation: 600,000] 
editorialized (8/2): 
 
"... China is, after all, an enemy country to Taiwan, and its 
attempt to annex the island remains unchanged.  Taiwan investments 
in China have reached four to five percent of the island's GDP, 
which already accounted for 71 percent of our nation's overseas 
investment rate last year.  Such a percentage is evidently too high, 
and it indicated that the investments in China have seriously 
elbowed out our domestic investments.  Since the DPP administration 
adopted the 'proactive opening' policy, Taiwan's domestic investment 
rate has been lingering around 20 percent, far lower than South 
Korea's 29 percent.  As a result, the 40 percent cap on Taiwan's 
investments on China, ... as proposed by some local scholars, is 
actually quite reasonable and meets the goal of the Conference on 
Taiwan's Sustainable Development.  We hope that in order to 
proactively boost domestic investment, the DPP administration will 
firmly remain opposed to lowering the ceiling on investment in 
China, or it could face serious consequences." 
 
¶4. Middle East 
 
"World Must Block Israel's Assault on Lebanese People" 
 
The pro-independence, English-language "Taiwan News" [circulation: 
20,000] editorialized (8/2): 
 
"... The Israel Defense Force attacks, which Washington continues to 
encourage while the United Nations Security Council passes toothless 
resolutions against them, are being packaged as 'preventive 
retaliation' for rocket attacks by extreme Shiite Islamic guerrillas 
or the Hezbollah organization under Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, which 
is said to be a 'terrorist' organization that variously carries out 
the policies of Syria and Iran or both or perhaps neither.  We 
condemn the use of violence and the killing of Israeli citizens and 
soldiers by Hezbollah forces as well, but the fact that the violence 
of the state terror of the IDF against the Lebanese people, which 
slays women, children and men indiscriminately and without regard to 
their political partisanship, has far exceeded any level that could 
be imagined to be either a proportionate 'retaliation' or even a 
'preventive' action. 
 
"What this entirely man-made tragedy manifests is the fatal logic of 
the conception of 'war against terror' propagated by the United 
States government under right-wing Republican President George W. 
Bush since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and 
Pentagon on September 11, 2001 and under whose bloody mantle Tel 
Aviv is conducting its own version of 'terror' against the people of 
Lebanon. ...  The only power that can exercise the necessary clout 
to persuade Tel Aviv to accept an immediate cease-fire and get out 
of Lebanon and let the world back in is the United States and its 
president.  All members of the world democratic community, including 
Taiwan, have an unavoidable obligation to humanity to openly call on 
Washington to do as soon as possible." 
 
YOUNG