Taiwan News: Why Kosovo, not Taiwan?

Taiwan News editorializes on the contrasting views of the US toward tiny Kosovo and Taiwan:

Speaking in Tirana, Albania on Sunday, U.S. President George W. Bush called for recognition of the independence of the Balkan territory of Kosovo, a landlocked province of Serbia with a majority Albanian population, which has been under United Nations administration and limited self-government since mid-1999 after a military intervention by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Speaking in front of Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha, Bush declared that "we believe Kosovo ought to be independent. There just cannot be continued drift, because I'm worried about expectations not being met in Kosovo." Bush even stated openly: "Independence is the goal, and that's what the people of Kosovo need to know."

After a year of negotiations in a so-called "Kosovo Status Process," the U.N. Security Council is now considering a draft resolution sponsored by the U.N., Belgium, Britain, France, Italy, Slovakia and Germany, calling for "full implementation" of the proposal by a U.N. special envoy for an "internationally-supervised independence" for Kosovo, which has a population of 2.2 million, over 90 percent of which are of Albanian ethnicity.

However, the effort is stalled due to opposition from the Russian Federation, which, like the People's Republic of China, also has a veto power as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.

If Moscow vetoes such a resolution, foreign affairs analysts expect that Washington may go outside the U.N. and unilaterally recognize the territory's independence.....

Obviously, as the editorial goes on to note, there are some important differences between Kosovo and Taiwan....

[Taiwan]