Taiwan's Chen dips in poll, opposition leaders gain

TAIPEI, Wednesday (AFP) Support for Taiwan's pro-independence President Chen Shui-bian dipped in a poll released Wednesday that also indicated wider support for two opposition leaders for their bridge-building trips to mainland China. Chen of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) scored only a 39-percent popularity rating in the China Times poll, down from 44 percent in February.

His disapproval rating rose to 43 percent from 39 percent, according to the survey of 1,002 people the Taipei paper carried out on May 9-10.

Forty-five percent of those polled said they disapproved of Chen's bitter criticism of his two key opponents for visiting communist China, while only 21 percent of respondents supported it.

Popularity for Lien Chan, chairman of the Kuomintang (KMT) party, meanwhile, grew to 47 percent following his landmark April 26-May 3 visit to the mainland, up from 31 percent.

On his trip, Lien met Chinese President Hu Jintao, and they jointly pledged to oppose independence for Taiwan and push for greater cross-strait economic and civil cooperation.

Support also rose for another opposition leader, People First Party chairman James Soong, who continued his China visit on Wednesday. His approval rating rose to 35 percent from 29 percent, the poll said.

The two Taiwan opposition leaders have said their visits were meant to seek peace and avoid war between the two sides, which were separated in 1949 by China's civil war, when the Nationalist KMT fled to the island of Taiwan.

Meanwhile Soong warned that moves by the island towards independence would lead to a "dead end," and said stable relations with China was in everyone's interests.

"Our consistent stance is that 'Taiwan independence' is a dead end, Taiwan independence has never been a choice that the People First Party and Taiwan should go for," Soong told students at Beijing's elite Tsinghua University.

The comments are likely to irk President Chen who lashed out at Soong earlier this week for vowing to oppose independence from the mainland.

"Several days ago when I was in Nanjing, an old man came up to me ... and said 'Mr Soong we don't want war' - this shows that people across the (Taiwan) Straits have the common wish for peace," he said in his speech.

He added that both China and Taiwan should strive to develop a prosperous common market and intensify cooperation instead of fighting each other. "We don't need war, ... a stable, open and peaceful China is in the interest of the world," he said.

"Many people, like me, have not experienced war but have experienced separation from our loved ones and the pain of separation, or have heard about our parents's sufferings," Soong said.

"We don't want our next generation to have to tell their younger generation about their bloody experience - that's why we have to work so hard for peace across the Straits."

Soong urged people in Taiwan and the mainland to try to understand more about each other, saying that Taiwanese people's feelings for Taiwan should not be confused with the "minority" desire to move towards independence.

"Taiwan's sense of identity is an emotion naturally developed through history. 'Taiwan independence' is a motive to separate Taiwan from the mainland," he said.