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Another year, another flight foul-up, another outburst from Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian.

Returning to Los Angeles with a 100-strong delegation from Managua, where he had witnessed the inauguration of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, Mr Chen was delayed more than four hours when Mexico banned his plane from its airspace - forcing the island's leader to cancel a teleconference with US congressional leaders and delaying his return home by a day.

He was supposed to return to Taipei last night but instead was to arrive this morning.

Mr Chen was quick to point the finger at Beijing, which counts Mexico among its diplomatic allies. He accused the mainland government of putting pressure on Mexican authorities to deny the presidential jet overflight rights.

'I deeply regret and feel hurt by [the mainland's] suppression of even a trip as simple as just attending the presidential inauguration of our ally,' Taiwan's cable news network TVBS quoted Mr Chen as saying on board the chartered China Airlines plane.

Mexico allowed Mr Chen's jet to fly through its airspace on its way to Nicaragua but decided at the last minute not to grant passage on its return flight, a Taiwanese Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

As a result, Mr Chen arrived at Los Angeles International Airport at 9.30pm and only had time to meet members of the city's Taiwanese community during a three-hour stopover.

Mr Chen claimed  Beijing had put pressure on Mexico because the US had allowed him to make transit stays on his way to and from Nicaragua, one of the 24 countries to recognise Taiwan rather than mainland China. Mr Chen was allowed an overnight transit stay in San Francisco en route from  Taiwan.

'After the US ignored  [Beijing's] protest by allowing [us] to stop over in two major US west coast cities, it resorted to a new method of suppressing us by denying our airspace,' he said.

The mainland had protested against the US decision to allow his stopovers - permission seen by Taiwanese Foreign Ministry officials as a sign of a warming in US-Taiwanese ties, which had soured after Mr Chen's pro-independence rhetoric escalated cross-strait tension.

Mr Chen said Beijing had done all it could to tarnish his 'successful trip'.

In May, strained ties with the US saw Mr Chen spurn what he considered to be humiliating US offers of a transit stop in far-flung Alaska or Hawaii rather than a high-profile stopover in New York on his way to Costa Rica. He returned to Taiwan via Libya after cancelling a US stop.



Chen hits turbulence over Mexico