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Taiwan's top negotiator calls for timely follow-up ECFA talks

ROC Central News Agency

2010/06/29 13:28:28

Chongqing, China, June 29 (CNA) Taiwan's top negotiator with China urged the two sides of the Taiwan Strait Tuesday to launch follow-up talks on an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) soon after the pact is signed.

The two sides were scheduled to seal the agreement later in the day, hours after the fifth biannual talks between Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Chairman Chiang Pin-kung and his Chinese counterpart, Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) President Chen Yunlin, began in the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing.

In an address at the opening of the meeting, Chiang pointed out that the goal of the meeting was to sign the ECFA and another agreement on intellectual property rights protection.

"Time shall not be wasted" when facing the global financial crisis and the fast integration of regional economies, he said, describing the ECFA as an important milestone in the development of cross-strait trade and economic ties.

It is also a key step taken by the two sides while each seeks a place in the regional economic integration and catches up with the worldwide trend of globalization, Chiang stated.

And "because the ECFA is set to progress step by step, I hope that after the signing, the two parties will have follow-up talks based on the results of its implementation and the actual needs of the cross-strait economic development, " he said.

For his part, Chen said the ECFA signing will take SEF-ARATS talks on economic issues into a new phase.

Chen said he regards the ECFA as an agreement formed through talks based on equality and one that pursues mutual benefit. It has been produced in an environment that has seen the two sides showing goodwill and making allowances for each other.

It further confirms cross-strait trade and investment relations and establishes a cooperation mechanism that will help the economic and prosperous development of the two sides, Chen said.

The two intermediary institutes were founded to handle cross-strait exchanges in the absence of diplomatic links. Negotiations between them started in 1992 and one year later, the heads of the two bodies, Taiwan's Koo Chen-fu and China's Wang Daohan, met each other in Singapore.

A second round of cross-strait talks was suspended in 1999 after Taiwan's then-president, Lee Teng-hui, released his "two states" theory, prompting China's ire. The talks were not resumed until 2008, when the Kuomintang won back power from the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party. (By Huang Chih-kuang and Elizabeth Hsu) ENDITEM/J