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Cross-strait dialogue resumes

ROC Central News Agency

2008-06-12 12:04:32

    Beijing, June 12 (CNA) Taiwan-based Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Chairman Chiang Pin-kung held talks with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing Thursday, marking the resumption of cross-Taiwan Strait dialogue after a nine-year hiatus.

    The meeting between Chiang and Chen Yunlin, chairman of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) took place as long as 10 years after the last visit to the Chinese capital by the late SEF Chairman Koo Chen-fu.

    The SEF and ARATS are the two semi-official intermediary bodies set up by Taiwan and China respectively to handle cross-strait affairs in the absence of official ties. High on the agenda of the talks are the launch of direct cross-strait charter flights on weekends and the arrival of Chinese tourists to Taiwan.

    In his opening remarks, Chiang extended condolences over the loss of life in the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan province and offered to assist Beijing in handling the aftermath of the disaster.

    Chiang said the SEF will coordinate efforts by Taiwan's government and private sectors and help with the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the disaster areas based on Taiwan's experience in handling the aftermath of the Sept. 21, 1999 earthquake.

    In return, Chen expressed his appreciation to Chiang for the offer.

    Chen said the resumption of dialogue between ARATS and SEF "is an important platform for the development of cross-strait relations."

    A meeting between the late SEF Chairman Koo Chen-fu and the late ARATS Chairman Wang Daohan in Singapore in 1993 led to a series of systematic exchanges between Taiwan and China, which had both avoided official contact since the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Chinese civil war.

    But the exchanges ground to a halt in 1999 when then-President Lee Teng-hui described cross-strait ties as a special state-to-state relationship, and Beijing continued to refuse dialogue with Taiwan during the eight-year administration of 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 Chiang Chin-yeh and Y.F. Low)

ENDITEM