KMT lawmakers call for recall of Japanese envoy on comments

Masaki Saito, Japan's Interchange Association representative in Taipei, must be considered persona non grata for stating in public the status of Taiwan has not been decided, legislators of the ruling party said, yesterday.

“Ambassador Saito must be recalled,” said a veteran lawmaker, who preferred to remain anonymous.

He said he and his colleagues demand the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to declare Saito unwelcome and ask the Japanese government to call its representative back to Tokyo.

Saito withdrew his statement, made in a speech at an annual meeting at Chung Cheng University in Chiayi for the International Relations Association of the Republic of China on Wednesday.

Yang Yung-ming, a commissioner of the National Security Council who attended the meeting, protested against the Saito statement, which might be regarded as Japan's governmental stance on the status of Taiwan.

Andrew Hsia, vice minister of foreign affairs, summoned Saito to his office in the afternoon, where the Japanese representative withdrew his statement and apologized.

C. T. Feng, Taipei's representative in Tokyo, also filed a protest with the Interchange Association and was told the Japan's stand on the status of Taiwan remains unchanged and what Saito said was his personal opinion.

That opinion, however, is shared by many Japanese politicians.

Japan was told to return Formosa and the Pescadores to the Republic of China in the Cairo Declaration of 1943 that states the purposes of the Allies in World War II.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek attended the Cairo conference, at the end of which the unsigned declaration was issued.

The Potsdam Declaration of 1945, which reiterates Japan's return of Taiwan and Penghu, was accepted by Japan for its conditional surrender to the Allies to end the war.

Chiang sent General Chen Yi to accept the surrender of General Rikichi Ando, Japanese governor of Taiwan, in Taipei on Oct. 25, 1945 to complete the takeover of the island as a province of the Republic of China.

Taipei was not asked to attend the San Francisco peace conference in 1952. In the peace treaty Japan signed at San Francisco, Japan renounced Taiwan and Penghu and ceded to it in perpetuity in 1895.

A peace treaty was signed between Japan and the Republic of China in Taipei in the following year. Japan reiterated its renunciation of Taiwan but did not mention it was returned to the Republic of China.

Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda has gone on the record by saying Japan could not return Taiwan to the Republic of China, because Tokyo had already surrendered it. Japan could not give away what one did not have in possession, he reasoned.

That has given rise to the theory that the status of Taiwan has yet to be determined.

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