TAIPEI -- The honeymoon is over for Taiwan's new president, Chen Shui-bian. Just over a month after taking office, the man hailed as the champion of the island's independence movement has been branded a heretic by critics within his own party. Analysts in Taipei believe his willingness to pander to pressure from the Clinton administration will eventually trap the island into a reunification deal with China from which it cannot escape.
The storm of criticism was prompted by Chen's statement to a visiting U.S. delegation last week that his government was prepared to resurrect an age-old, and contentious, formula that may allow Taipei and Beijing to begin talking again after years of formal silence, in which the two sides have come close to war. In effect, Chen appeared to acknowledge for the first time that he was prepared to return to a 1992 consensus forged between Beijing and the previous Nationalist government, whereby the two sides agreed to disagree on the meaning of "one China" and shelve their decades-old dispute on Taiwan's status.
Washington is desperate to see the two sides put aside their differences and work toward a peaceful settlement of the island's status, because the United States could easily be drawn into a war in the Taiwan Strait.