President Lee Teng-hui this afternoon says that the ROC government over the past years has taken a series of measures, including setting up the National Unification Council in September 1990 and terminating the Period of National Mobilization for Suppression of the Communist Rebellion in May 1991, in order to sustain peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits for the eventual realization of China's unification by peaceful means. This shows that we have exercised restraint. Regrettably, the Chinese Communists have so far refused to renounce the use of force against Taiwan, he notes. Leaders in Peking should weigh cross-Straits relations in a calm and rational manner, the President adds.
President Lee makes the remarks while meeting with a group of foreign scholars attending the "International Conference on Taiwan-Mainland China Relations and the Asian Pacific Region" on July 22-23. The conference is sponsored by the China Times newspaper.
Among the guests who come to meet the President are Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. national security adviser; Charles Freeman, former U.S. assistant secretary of defense; Edward Friedman, a professor at the University of Wisconsin; Ronald Morse, a professor at Maryland University; Cheng Chu-yuan, a professor at Ball University in Indianna; Gerald Segal, researcher at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies; and Kaw Ying-Maw, a professor at Brown University.
President Lee also tells his guests that when a consensus is reached and with the support of the 21.3 million people in the Taiwan area, he is willing to embark on a journey of peace to the mainland and meet with leaders in Peking. And he urges the mainland authorities to resume the dialogue they unilaterally suspended in mid-1995 and to forge a peace agreement with the ROC.
Asked what are the tasks he most hopes to accomplish within the next four years, the President lists constitutional democracy, educational reform, cultural development, and administrative reform.