Haig: One China principle basis for Sino-US ties
( 2002-02-19 09:28) (8)
Former US secretary of state Alexander Haig said on Wednesday that the one China principle has been the "basis for the Sino-US relationship since 1972," when the two countries signed a historic joint communique that paved the way for the establishment of diplomatic ties in 1979.
He said this in an exclusive written interview with Xinhua days before President George W. Bush's visit to China on February 21-22. February also sees the 30th anniversary of the signing of the 1972 Shanghai Communique.
"I am confident that the Chinese people on both sides of the ( Taiwan) Strait realize that there are significant benefits to a peaceful evolution of the reunification issue, just as the world has seen the historic evolution of Hong Kong and Macao under a ' one China, two systems' formula," he said.
Haig said the Taiwan issue, as well as its eventual reunification with the mainland, is best left to a more open dialogue between the people on both sides of the strait.
On the importance of the Shanghai Communique, signed when late US president Richard Nixon made his historic visit to China in February 1972, Haig said its critical words were that the United States "acknowledged that all Chinese on both sides on the Taiwan Strait maintain that there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of China."
That, "to this day, must serve as the touchstone of the relationship" between the two countries, he added.
Haig said this principle, affirmed by six succeeding US presidents after Nixon, has enabled the relationship to weather the inevitable differences that are to be expected between two great countries.
Haig served as deputy national security advisor to then US president Richard Nixon He was head of an advance group that prepared for Nixon's historic visit to China in 1972 and one of the important participants in the making of the Shanghai Communique the same year. He served as secretary of state in 1980-82.
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