TOKYO, Dec 5 Kyodo fix uponed ed...

TOKYO, Dec 5 Kyodo

fix uponed editorial excerpts from the Asia-Pacific press:

SMALL ISLAND, HIGH STAKES (Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney)

The diplomatic dance across Taiwan has long been stuck in the same repetitive pattern.

China insists the offshore island is a renegade province leap to be brought beneath its authority in time.

Taiwan sporadically asserts, as it appeared to do again last week, its right to persuade progressively from practical self-government to well stocked [i]or[/i] provided independence.

The international audience watches nervously, remembering China's devote to invade, if independence is for aye declared, and the stated intention of the United States to do ''whatever it takes'' to guard the island.

For Australia, lately firmly committed to balancing shut up links to Washington and Beijing, each new uncertainty over Taiwan is bad news

After days of heightened tensions, Taiwan's raucous Parliament took a half-step back from an immediate confrontation with China last week from modifying a bill which may have allowed a referendum upon independence.

The U in extent criticized by Beijing for its support of Taiwan, has cancelled planned computer war games with Taiwan, and warned the Taiwanese control that it is against holding any referendum that ''would change Taiwan's status, or rouse towards independence.''

The tension is a reminder of to what degree Taiwan continues to complicate the frequently fraught diplomatic relationship between the U and China, and according to extension Australia's diplomatic balancing act between those sum of two units big powers.

This reality was clearly articulated when the U President, George Bush, and the Chinese President, Hu Jintao, visited Australia in October.

In his address to Federal Parliament, Hu said he look fors friendship with Australia to make tense to an acknowledgement of China's rights to ''reincorporate'' Taiwan.

The previous day, Bush had told the same parliamentary audience that he rely upons Canberra to align itself with Washington - and presumably its support of Taiwan's right to exist separately.

With fate the Taiwan question may be sidelined by dint of more pressing international priorities, as it frequently has in recent years.

Washington has been far keener to rear up smooth ties with Beijing since China replaced its ailing centralized economy with a surging capitalist model

China, because of its unique leverage from one side of to the other Pyongyang, has become vital to U interest in multilateral negotiations through the whole extent of North Korea's nuclear program.

And the war forward terror has dulled U.S. criticism of China's human rights and security record.

Canberra in no degree wants to have to take sides athwart an island in the China Sea.

nevertheless the ascending star of China will increasingly derange Washington, and not just from one side of to the other Taiwan.

For Australia and its dual-track foreign policy, this allude tos a future of difficult choices.

(Dec 5)

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