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'Two countries' reference clarified by Presidential Office

ROC Central News Agency

2010/02/18 15:52:49

Taipei, Feb. 18 (CNA) President Ma Ying-jeou would not refer to Taiwan and China as "the two countries, " a Presidential Office spokesman said Thursday in clarifying a press release that used the term a day earlier.

The Liberty Times reported that according to a Presidential Office press release issued Wednesday, the president referred to Taiwan and China as "two countries" when he talked with a visiting U.S. congressman earlier in the day.

Spokesman Wang Yu-chi said, however, that the president has not and would never refer to cross-strait relations as relations between two countries.

Wang explained that according to the Republic of China Constitution, the ROC on Taiwan is a sovereign state and the Chinese mainland is an ROC "area." Under this constitutional framework, he said, the ROC does not recognize China as a sovereign nation but "does not deny that in fact mainland authorities are the effective ruling authority in the mainland Chinese area." Such a constitutional framework has been observed in Taiwan since former President Lee Teng-hui promulgated it 19 years ago, Wang said, and the opposition Democratic Progressive Party did not try to make any changes to the framework during its eight-year rule between 2000 and 2008 either.

"Following such a framework not only is not a sign of weakness, it helps underline the ROC's sovereignty and subjectivity, " Wang said.

The topic is sensitive, however, because Ma's predecessors -- Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian -- both referred to relations with China as "state-to-state" relations.

But in his effort to improve relations with Taiwan's long-time rival, Ma has backed away from that formula, instead referring consistently to Taiwan and China as the "two sides" of the Taiwan Strait within the context of cross-strait relations.

According to the newspaper report, the Presidential Office press release wrote that Ma described Taiwan and China as the "two countries" when discussing a proposed economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China with visiting U.S. Representative James Sensenbrenner on Wednesday.

The words "two countries" were later removed from the press release posted on the Presidential Office Web site and changed to "the two sides," according to the newspaper.

(By Huang Jui-hung and Deborah Kuo) ENDITEM/ls