HONG KONG — Taiwan's national legislature approved two separate resolutions on Tuesday that call on China to remove nearly 500 missiles pointed at the island, as Taiwan's vice president described the missiles as "state-sponsored terrorism."
The resolutions and the comments by Vice President Annette Lu drew a quick response from Beijing.
China "must make necessary preparations" to crush any attempt toward independence, Li Weiyi, a spokesman for the cabinet's office of Taiwan affairs, told reporters, according to Reuters.
With closely fought presidential elections scheduled for March 20, many Taiwanese politicians are unwilling to back away from confronting China.
When Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China visited Washington last week, President Bush publicly called for President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan to stop raising tensions in the Taiwan Strait. But Chen has been defiant, insisting at campaign rallies and in interviews that he will go ahead with plans to hold a national referendum on Election Day that will demand China's removal of the missiles and a Chinese renunciation of the use of force against the island.
Chen's Democratic Progressive Party has long leaned toward more formal independence for Taiwan from the mainland, and it has tended to do better at the polls when tensions with the mainland are highest. The opposition Nationalist Party favors eventual political reunification with the mainland and usually fares badly when people in Taiwan are especially upset with Beijing.
In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, Lu said that China's "deployment of missiles is a kind of state-sponsored terrorism."
A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of China responded at a routine briefing, saying Lu's comments were "totally unreasonable" and that, "China's using armed force to protect national sovereignty and territorial integrity is totally different." The stronger official comments came later.
The Nationalist Party introduced the first of the two resolutions on Tuesday. It called for China not to deploy any more missiles and to gradually remove the current missiles.
The party's chairman and presidential candidate, Lien Chan, said on Dec. 5 in an interview that the resolution represented an alternative to Chen's plans to hold a national referendum to seek the removal of the missiles. Lien said that since China had been building up its missile batteries across the Taiwan Strait for years, those missiles did not pose a "clear and present danger" that would justify holding the referendum.
The Democratic Progressive Party responded in the legislature with its own resolution, one that calls on China to remove the missiles immediately.
With the parties unable to compromise on the wording, the two resolutions passed.
The chief spokesman for Chen, James Huang, said Wednesday that the passage of the resolutions was not enough, unless the votes prompted China to comply, an action that experts agree is very unlikely.
On Dec. 5, when Chen first announced plans for the referendum, he said that he would proceed with the voting unless China removed the missiles and renounced the use of force before March 20, and that remains his position, Huang said.
Referring to the mainland by its legal name, the People's Republic of China, Huang said, "The key point is the reaction of the PRC in terms of the missile deployment and the arms buildup against Taiwan."