Taiwan's Chen expects Koizumi to visit, vows to finish term

TAIPEI, Sept. 5 Kyodo

Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian on Tuesday extended an invitation to outgoing Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to visit Taiwan in October to attend the inaugural ceremony of the island's first Japan-made high-speed railway.

Chen told Japanese television station Fuji TV in an interview that he hopes Koizumi can make the visit to inaugurate the railway linking Taipei in the island's north and Kaohsiung in the south, a Foreign Ministry spokesman was quoted as saying by the Central News Agency.

He also expressed hope that Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe will succeed Koizumi as prime minister later this month. Abe is the odds-on favorite to win the ruling Liberal Democratic Party election.

''Mr. Abe is friendly and knows Taiwan very well. His victory would be conducive to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait as well as the Asia-Pacific region (as a whole),'' Chen was quoted by CNA as saying.

Japan switched diplomatic recognition in 1972 from Taipei to Beijing, which sees the self-governing island as a breakaway province that should not conduct independent diplomacy.

Retired Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori made a low-profile trip to Taiwan in late 2003 amid strong protests from Beijing, becoming the second former Japanese leader to visit the island in three decades after Takeo Fukuda in 1972.

Chen, currently on a four-day, two-leg trip to the South Pacific allies, departed Taipei on Sunday amid a mounting domestic outcry for him to resign to take political responsibilities for a string of corruption scandals besetting his inner circle.

Mass protests are planned for this weekend in front of the Presidential Office.

At a press conference later Tuesday that was broadcast live in Taiwan, Chen said he respects different opinions, denied any wrongdoing, reaffirmed he would not interfere with investigative proceedings and pledged to stay in office until his term ends in 2008.

''It is up to the people to decide whether to trust me or not,'' Chen said.

Chen also denounced accusations that his overseas trip was designed to divert public attention from the scandals, arguing that his purpose is to secure Taiwan's international survival space in the face of suppression from rival China.

On Monday, Chen participated in a summit meeting with leaders of six South Pacific diplomatic allies, which besides Palau include the Solomon Islands, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Tuvalu and Kiribati, and advocated long-term cooperative partnership with them.

He dismissed media reports that Taipei was engaging in ''checkbook diplomacy'' to compete with Beijing for diplomatic recognition in the region.

''Providing monetary aid is not necessarily equal to money diplomacy,'' Chen said. ''We should be proud of ourselves that we are capable of helping our Pacific allies in development process.''

Chen is set to leave Palau on Wednesday and make diplomatically sensitive refueling stop in Guam on his way back to Taipei, marking his first transit on the U.S. territory since a diplomatic spat between Taipei and Washington earlier this year.

In May, Chen unexpectedly cancelled a planned stopover on U.S. soil en route to two Latin American nations after the United States, which severed ties with Taipei in 1979, snubbed his request to land in either New York or San Francisco and only offered him remote Alaska or Hawaii instead.

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