Taipei, Oct. 14 (CNA) Beijing's containment of Taiwan in the international community is not conducive to boosting world peace and stability, President Chen Shui-bian said Tuesday.
Taiwan has striven to join the activities of official international organizations, but has often been undermined by Beijing because of political reasons, Chen said.
He stressed that excluding Taiwan from the world community does not benefit the global fight against terrorism, where terrorists increasingly do not have a central base in any one place.
The president made the remarks during his speech to the opening of the 37th International Carnahan Conference on Security and Technology (ICCST) at the Grand Hotel, Taipei, which has brought together more than 400 specialists in security technology from 14 countries.
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and ROC Vice President Annette Lu are among the dignitaries attending the three-day conference, which has "e-security" as its theme.
Chen said the 9-11 terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001 completely altered peoples' concepts of security and global violence, while anti-terrorism has become one of the top tasks for members of the international community.
Noting that security is one of the few vital factors of a nation's existence, Chen said the concept of security, however, has changed drastically from that of the Cold War era -- from the traditional security concept with a nation or nations as the center to an unconventional security concept regarding social, economic, cultural and everyday life concerns.
In 1994, he said, the United Nations trumpeted the idea of "human security" to strengthen a new concept in security with peoples and groups, rather than a nation or nations, as the center.
Unlike traditional threats of violence, which were mainly in the nature of military, unconventional security threats nowadays are more kaleidoscopic in nature, including global terrorism, illegal immigrants, economic crimes, cyber crimes, damage to wildlife conservation, the spread of epidemic diseases, human rights infringements and cross-border crime rings, Chen said.
He went on to say that as a member of the global village, Taiwan is eager to contribute more to efforts to boost security in the international community and would hate to be excluded from those efforts.
Chen, meanwhile, offered his admiration for the ICCST, which he said has continuously invited experts and specialists from Taiwan to take part in its annual conferences since 1986, an effort fully reflecting the prestigious organization's support for Taiwan.