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Legislator: Report on envoys is wrong

A report in Singapore's Straits Times that China rejected an offer from Taiwan to send secret envoys has caused a stir among officials familiar with cross-strait affairs -- but a legislator involved in cross-strait relations said that, after having looked into the story on his own yesterday, he doubts its validity.

The newspaper report said that China had refused an offer by President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to send secret envoys to Beijing to start a dialogue.

The report also quoted Beijing sources as saying that China does not want to know what Chen plans to say in his May 20 inauguration speech.

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Chung-hsin (陳忠信), head of the party's Mainland Affairs Department, said that he had made several phone calls yesterday to "appropriate people" to look into the report.

Declining to say whether the people he had called included Chinese officials, Chen Chung-hsin said that nobody within the DPP knew anything about a plan to dispatch envoys to China.

Chen Chung-hsin refused to speculate on why "sources in Bei-

jing" might have disclosed information regarding the envoys just three weeks ahead of Chen Shui-bian's swearing-in.

"There was no such thing as secret envoys," the legislator said.

Chen Chung-hsin acknowledged that before Chen Shui-bian's speech in May 2000, China-based Taiwanese businessmen had offered to serve as a conduit between the newly elected president and the Beijing authorities to discuss the contents of Chen's inauguration speech.

Chen Chung-hsin said he did not know whether Chen Shui-bian would try to communicate to Bei-

jing what he plans to say in his inauguration speech this month.

During a TV talk show that aired in January, Chen displayed a note that he said had been written by a "powerful Beijing figure," seeming to confirm reports that he had had secret communications with China before his 2000 inauguration.

Mainland Affairs Council Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) once said in a legislative question-and-answer session that the existence of envoys is "no secret among core government officials."

The Chinese-language China Times conducted an investigation into how Chen Shui-bian obtained the note he displayed on the TV talk show.

The paper said that the president sent a copy of his inauguration speech to Beijing before he delivered it.

According to the paper, due to the pre-inauguration dialogue between Chen Shui-bian and China, Beijing was able to air its response to the speech via state media at 2pm on May 20, 2000. The president finished his speech that day at around 11am.

Su Chi (蘇起), former council chairman and senior policy advisor to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), said that after four years' observation of Chen Shui-bian's announcements and actions, Bei-

jing has "completely lost trust" in the president.

In Beijing's view, Chen Shui-bian has been actively moving towards independence. China no longer sees the president as a mere "independence advocate," Su said.
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