Premier Yu Shyi-kun's threat to strike Shanghai with missiles if major cities on Taiwan were attacked shows the island's leaders do not really want peace, Beijing's Taiwan Affairs Office said at a regular briefing.

"Yu Shyi-kun's remarks are a serious provocation and a clamor for war," said Li Weiyi, spokesman for the office.

"This kind of belligerent provocation has exposed that the Taiwan authorities are not really for peace but for Taiwan independence," he said.

Yu at the weekend vowed to strike back should China launch missile attacks against the island.

"You (China) have the capability to destroy me and Taiwan should have the capability to counter. You strike me with 100 missiles and I should at least strike back with 50," Yu told a gathering of government officials.

"You strike Taipei and Kaohsiung and I shall strike Shanghai. This way Taiwan will be safe," he added.

On Monday, without referring to the threat, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing warned world leaders at the United Nations to refrain from any action that might fan the flames of independence on Taiwan.

The United States also delivered a soft rebuke to Taiwan by telling it and China not to fuel cross-strait tension.

"We would prefer to see comments that focus on dialogue as opposed to references to the use of force or other unilateral moves," deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said when asked about Yu's weekend comments.

Li, the Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman, Wednesday also criticized plans by Taiwan to spend some 600 billion Taiwan dollars (18 billion US dollars) on a giant weapons package to boost its numerically inferior military.

He noted that thousands of Taiwanese had taken to the streets to protest against the massive arms procurement project on Saturday.

"It shows that it does not enjoy public support," he said. "The peoples on the two sides of the Taiwan Straits should maintain a high degree of vigilance and join hands in containing the splittist pro-independence activities."

He warned that attempts at bringing about Taiwan independence would "seriously threaten peace in the Taiwan Straits."

"For the Chinese people, there is nothing more important or holy than protecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China," he said.

"Any person, or any force, using any means to attempt independence, is the enemy of 1.3 billion Chinese, and is destined for defeat," he said.

Taiwan has been ruled separately from China for 55 years, but Beijing still claims the island as part of its territory and has repeatedly threatened to use military force to prevent Taiwanese independence.

China is building up a strong missile force along its southeast coast to intimidate Taiwan.

Media reports have suggested that Taiwan itself is involved in research efforts to improve its missile capability, some of which could eventually be able to hit population centers along the mainland's prosperous east coast.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.