TAIWAN TROUBLE?

The Clinton Administration today officially acknowledged that it will grant the president of Taiwan a visa allowing the Cornell University alumnus to appear at his alma mater. President Lee Teng-hui, who has been invited to address an alumni reunion at Cornell's Ithaca, N.Y. campus, in June, would be the first leader of Taiwan to visit the U.S. since 1979, when Washington recognized Beijing as the sole government of China. (China regards Taiwan, the seat of the Nationalist Chinese who fled the communist takeover of the Chinese mainland in 1949, as a renegade province.) The State Department has been loath toupset its delicate China policyin hope that gradual pressure will persuade Beijing to moderate its trade and human rights policies. But they said recent outcries from Capitol Hill -- including near-unanimous House and Senate resolutions supporting the visa application last month -- have forced President Clinton to make an exception of Lee as a "friend of democracy."