Hello and welcome to News Hour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service

studios in Central London. I'm Tim Franks and coming up on the program we'll be talking about a couple of wars already in train.

The conflict in the Middle East, with dozens more reported dead in Gaza, a deadly Hezbollah attack on an Israeli military base in a potentially very significant

deployment of US troops and a new anti-missile system to Israel.

And we'll hear from our correspondent on the front line in eastern Ukraine as

the war there with Russia continues to cause immense damage. But we're going to

begin in another part of the world altogether with fears of war.

We're heading to East Asia where Taiwan's president,

Li Jing deh has been holding emergency meetings

with security chiefs as China has conducted what

have thought to be its biggest war games yet around the self-governing island.

The spokeswoman for Taiwan's presidential office, Karen Guo, urged Beijing to end the drills.

At present, the international community's consensus is to maintain peace and

stability in the Taiwan Strait and the Indo-Pacific region. China should face the

fact and the existence of the Republic of China Taiwan.

Respect the choice of the Taiwanese people for a democratic and free lifestyle

and refrain from military provocations that would jeopardise the peace and stability of the region

and threaten Taiwan's democracy and freedom.

The Chinese government has always insisted that Taiwan is part of its own territory, but last Thursday in a speech

in Tai Bay marking Taiwan's National Day, President Lai insisted that Beijing had in his words no right to represent the island. Today the

Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Mawning repeated Beijing's opposition to Taiwanese independence.

Taiwan independence and peace in the Taiwan Strait are irreconcilable.

...