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Taiwan moves to ease tensions with China

Taipei Aug 7. Amid rising tensions with China, Taiwan's military cancellled a submarine-hunting exercise scheduled for next week, a military spokesman said today.

Though the military would not say whether the decision was directly related to the recent friction with China, the military spokesman said that Taiwan called off the drills to avoid creating new ``misunderstandings.''

``It was a routine drill, but we were afraid that the public and the media would read too much into it,'' said the spokesman, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.

The exercise, code named ``Sea Shark'' was purely defensive in nature and was to be held next Thursday on Taiwan's eastern coast, near the city of Hualien, the spokesman said.

Taiwanese and foreign media were invited to cover the event.

China is Taiwan's biggest military threat.

The two sides split amid civil war in 1949, and Beijing has repeatedly threatened to use force to take over the island.

Tensions flared up after the Taiwanese President, Chen Shui-bian, said last weekend that there was ``one country on each side'' of the Taiwan Strait — the 160-km-wide body of water that divides the rivals.

Beijing viewed the comment to be a serious challenge to its sacred belief that self-governed Taiwan belongs to China and that the democratic island had no right to seek formal independence. — AP

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