AFP, TAIPEI: Taiwan's defense ministry has put its troops on full alert ahead of the island's presidential polls and is closely watching China's submarine fleet and missile units, it said Tuesday.
China's missile threat is at the heart of polling day issues on Saturday with voters also being asked in a referendum to back government plans to boost military defences against some 500 missiles pointed at Taiwan.
The military's main role is to allow the Taiwanese public to “cast their sacred ballots,” defense ministry spokesman Huang Suey-sheng told reporters.
He said Taiwan would watch Chinese troops with surveillance focused on ballistic missile units and the submarine fleet.
“If any abnormal sign is detected, the military would swiftly react according to the contingency plans,” Huang said, without going into details of the response.
China has maintained its claim over Taiwan, which split from the mainland in 1949 at the end of civil war, and has threatened to take the island by force if it declares independence.
It has condemned the referendum which it considers a first step towards an eventual vote on severing all ties between the two sides.
The island's fraught relations with its greatest rival China have figured prominently in the close-run presidential contest between Chen, 53, of the Democratic Progressive Party, and his sole challenger, Kuomintang chairman Lien Chan, 67.
