Taiwan wants missile demands on China on March ballot

TAIPEI, Taiwan - President Chen Shui Bian wants Taiwan's first islandwide referendum to be a vote demanding that China stop threatening the island and remove hundreds of missiles aimed at it, an official said Saturday.

The symbolic vote - planned for March 20 - has already made Beijing and Washington nervous.

Chinese leaders have long feared that any kind of referendum could lead to an independence vote, something Beijing has repeatedly vowed to use force to stop. The United States has helped defend Taiwan before and would likely be called to fight if another conflict breaks out.

China and Taiwan have had icy relations since the 1949 civil war, when the Communists took over the mainland and the enemy Nationalists fled to Taiwan. China's leadership says the island - just 100 miles from the mainland - is a sacred piece of China worth going to war over.

The Taiwanese president has yet to show any enthusiasm about China's goal of unification, and his Democratic Progressive Party favors allowing the Taiwanese to vote on their political future.

When Chen announced last month he wanted to hold a referendum during the March 20 presidential election, some feared he might provoke China with a ballot on the sovereignty issue.

After keeping voters guessing for a week about what the referendum would be about, the presidential office revealed the details Saturday.

"The missile issue will be on the referendum. That's for sure," presidential spokesman James Huang told the Associated Press.

During the past week, Chen dropped several hints that the vote would be about the more than 400 ballistic missiles China has deployed directly across from Taiwan.

On Saturday, Huang said Chen was adding a new twist to the missile referendum. The president would "consider calling off the March 20 referendum" if China redeployed the missiles and renounced the use of force against Taiwan, he said.

China is unlikely to agree.

Polls consistently report that a large number of Taiwanese don't want to unify with China but oppose seeking formal independence for fear of sparking a war. They favor the current arrangement of de facto independence.

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