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Taiwan used all means to notify China of missile mishap: official

ROC Central News Agency

2016/07/03 20:25:01

Taipei, July 3 (CNA) China should have received a notification from Taiwan about the Navy's accidental launching of a missile into the Taiwan Strait on July 1, given that Taipei has used all available means of communication with Beijing, a senior Taiwanese official in charge of cross-strait affairs said Sunday.

Deputy Minister of Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) was responding to Zhang Zhijun (張志軍), head of China's Taiwan Affairs Office, who replied on July 1 that he "had no information," when asked if the MAC had notified his office of the incident.

Zhang said at that time that Taiwan should provide a "responsible" explanation for the missile mishap earlier that day, calling it a "serious" matter.

In Taipei, the MAC said in a statement that day that it had asked the Straits Exchange Foundation, a semi-official organization responsible for cross-strait negotiations, to notify its Chinese counterpart -- the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) -- of the situation and ask it to help pass the information to related Chinese government agencies.

Chiu said that if necessary, the MAC will pass on further information regarding the accident but at present, it has no plan to again notify China on the mishap.

The MAC has the responsibility of providing Beijing with accurate information over the matter to avoid a misunderstanding and the accident highlights the importance of a cross-strait communications mechanism, Chiu added.

The locally developed Hsiung Feng III missile was accidentally launched from one of the Navy's 500-ton Chinchiang-class corvettes at Zuoying Military Harbor in Kaohsiung during a drill on July 1 and hit a fishing boat, killing the skipper and injuring three other crew members on the boat.

The fishing boat was some 40 nautical miles away from the military harbor in southern Taiwan. A chart provided by the Navy showed that the simulated position targeted by the missile was in the Taiwan Strait, northwest of the harbor and southeast of the offshore county of Penghu.

(By Chen Chia-luan and Evelyn Kao)
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