Taiwan jets land on highways

Taiwan closed certain highways Tuesday to allow fighter jets to practice landing on its highways in case its air bases were bombed by the Chinese, report agencies.

The exercise, part of Taiwan's biggest annual military drill, is aimed to "review the air force's capability in using freeways for emergency landings and logistic support in case of war," air force officials were quoted as saying.

This follows a massive Chinese amphibious military exercise on islands in the Taiwan Strait, which Chinese media described as a simulation of an impending attack on Taiwan.

Some 8,000 Chinese troops are taking part in the week-long drill, which also coincides with "Summer Pulse 2004" a massive naval exercise by the US and allied nations, like Britain and Canada, in the region.

China and Taiwan have been separated since 1949, and Taipei has repeatedly rejected Beijing's demands for unification.

In a sign that China is losing patience, the chairman of China's Central Military Commission Jiang Zemin last week set a deadline of 2020 for reunification, the first such deadline set by Beijing. The exercises were a warning to ''Taiwan Independence elements'' that China ''is capable and confident in settling the Taiwan issue by military force,'' said the People's Daily.

But as two French-made Mirage 2000-5 fighters landed and took off from a freeway in Tainan, southern Taiwan, Taiwan's military dismissed the Chinese drills as 'routine'.

American officials too denied that the Chinese and US exercises are linked in any manner. 'Summer Pulse,' described as one biggest military exercises ever staged, involving 150,000 troops, 50 warships and 600 aircraft, is global in scope and did not have anything to do with China –Taiwan dispute, they said.

But a report in The Los Angeles Times said analysts see the concurrent war games as mutual saber-rattling, suggesting that rising hostilities across the 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait may have reached a critical juncture.