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Taiwan, China reach agreement on weekend charter services

ROC Central News Agency

2008-06-12 17:55:25

    Beijing, June 12 (CNA) Taiwan and China negotiators announced Thursday in Beijing they had reached an agreement on all provisions regarding the launch of weekend cross-Taiwan Strait charter flights.

    The two sides are expected to officially sign the agreement Friday, according to the Taipei-based Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Vice Chairman Kao Koong-lian and the Beijing-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) Vice Chairman Sun Yafu.

    Kao and Sun, however, did not disclose the details of the agreement.

    After concluding the talks on the charter flight issue in the morning, negotiators from the two sides engaged in further talks in the afternoon on the issue of the admission of Chinese tourists to Taiwan.

    Representatives from Taiwan and China had previously held several rounds of negotiations on the two issues, but were not able to seal an agreement owing to differences on some crucial provisions.

    The negotiations were taken over by the SEF and ARATS -- the two semi-official intermediary bodies set up by Taiwan and China respectively to handle cross-strait affairs in the absence of official ties -- after Beijing finally agreed to the resumption of dialogue between the two organizations.

    Relations between the two sides have been thawing in the wake of the Kuomintang administration's May 20 inauguration. The SEF-ARATS dialogue that began Thursday in Beijing marked the first of its kind in nine years. Exchanges between the two organizations ground to a halt in 1999 when then-Republic of China President Lee Teng-hui described cross-strait ties as a special state-to-state relationship.

    Beijing continued to refuse dialogue with Taiwan during the eight-year administration of former President Chen Shui-bian of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party.

    The icy relations began to warm up after the March 22 election of President Ma Ying-jeou, who has proposed that the two sides resume dialogue on the basis of the "1992 consensus" that allows both sides to agree to disagree on the meaning of "one China."

(By Y.F. Low)

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