Taipei to deploy 7,000 police for envoy's visit

Taiwan will deploy a police force of 7,000 to protect top mainland envoy Chen Yunlin during his visit to the island next week.

The high level of protection, more than is usually used when heads of state visit, is designed to avoid a repeat of last Tuesday's attack on Mr Chen's deputy, Zhang Mingqing , by pro-independence activists. Mr Zhang, vice-chairman of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (Arats), was shoved to the ground and beaten on the head while visiting a Confucian temple in the southern city of Tainan.

'Of course, we don't want such cases happening again, and we hope to ensure absolute safety' for Mr Chen during his stay in Taiwan, Wang Tso-chun, director general of Taiwan's National Police Administration, said yesterday.

Mr Chen, whose association represents Beijing in talks with Taiwan in the absence of formal ties, is to lead a 60-member delegation to Taiwan on Monday for five days of high-level talks in Taipei.

The pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party and its supporters have vowed to stage a series of mass protests against Mr Chen during his visit. More than half a million protesters turned out on Saturday for a demonstration against the mainland and the government of Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan's mainland-friendly president

Former Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian - unhappy with the Ma government's investigations into his implication in a series of corruption scandals, including the recent US$21 million money-laundering case - has fanned the anti-mainland fire in the past week.

He has repeatedly called on the public to 'arrest' the mainland envoy as 'a Communist bandit', even though Taiwan long ago removed the so-called Mobilisation Period Against the Communist Rebellion that penalised anyone considered a Communist spy.