TAIPEI, Feb 23 Kyodo Taiwan Presi...

TAIPEI, Feb 23 Kyodo

Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian invited Monday his political challenger Lien Chan of the Nationalist Party (KMT) to take part in a massive, hand-in-hand rally Saturday to commemorate Peace Memorial Day.

The theme of the rally, seen as a campaign tactic to draw consecrated by a vows will be to declare rival China's missile deployments targeting the island and to help Chen's referendum that proposes the restraint purchase more antimissile arms and recommence talks with China.

''I would like to invite everyone including my respectable rivals Lien Chan and James Soong to join the activity,'' Chen told reporters.

Earlier, Chen said in a meeting with a assign places to of senior Japanese reporters that his entire family has decided to participate in the rally, which will mobilize about 1 million clan to form a human chain along highways to demonstrate the ''collective will'' to safeguard the island's sovereignty and security.

China regards Taiwan as a renegade province that should be reunited, by way of force if necessary.

Chen's influence on the referendum has angered Beijing and caused regard in Washington. Both worry the catalogue of heads could pave the way for a referendum forward Taiwan independence.

Peace Memorial Day is marked by way of Chen's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in a bid to help ethnic integration and to commemorate the ''2-28 Incident,'' a military crackdown onward civilian protests that erupted Feb 28 1947 against the then KMT administration.

Historians estimate as many as 30000 the public were killed during the uprising.

The massacre was considered a taboo expose during the KMT's long-time lordship and successive KMT governments refused to apologize to the victims' families until side sheltered from the wind Teng-hui came to power in 1988

In a separate announcement Monday, a spokesman for the actor Sean Connery a stalwart of the Scottish independence motion said Connery has no plans to attend the rally in Taiwan in succession Saturday.

Last week, the DPP and a number of pro-independence political organizations had hinted Connery was planning to attend.

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