WASHINGTON - TAIWANESE President Chen Shui-bian vowed to push ahead with his plan for a referendum on the island's membership in the United Nations, urging UN member states to resist Chinese opposition.

Mr Chen, speaking via satellite to a Washington think-tank on Thursday, also called for 'substantive dialogue' at high levels between Taiwan and the United States, rather than the public US criticism that has met his March referendum plan.

'Taiwan is not part of the People's Republic of China. Taiwan is an independent, sovereign country,' he said, repeating a formula that rankles the communist government in China, which claims sovereignty over the island.

'The PRC has no right and is unable to represent the 23 million people of Taiwan in the United Nations,' Mr Chen said in a videoconference in Taipei beamed to the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

Mr Chen's remarks came hours after China's president, Hu Jintao, told US President George W. Bush on the sidelines of an Asia Pacific summit in Sydney that the coming years marked 'a period of high danger for the Taiwan situation'.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman quoted Mr Hu as telling Mr Bush that: 'We must give stronger warnings to the Taiwan authorities.' But the unabashed Mr Chen called on members of the UN General Assembly and Security Council to resist Chinese pressure and 'abuse of power' and weigh democratic, self-ruled Taiwan's bid on its merits. -- REUTERS