After four days of talks a new agreement on Taiwan-Hong Kong air links was still proving elusive as of press time last night as Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) officials were still waiting for Hong Kong's decision.
The current agreement expires at midnight on Sunday.
Director of the MAC's Department of Information and Liaison Chen Chung-hong (陳崇弘) said late last night that Taiwan had waited for Hong Kong's response to its most recent proposals all day yesterday, but the representatives negotiating for the Hong Kong side had failed to give any response.
Chen quoted Jan Jyh-horng (詹志宏), the director of the MAC's Department of Research and Planning who is acting as a negotiator for the Taiwan Airlines Association in the talks, as saying that negotiations would continue today if necessary with the aim of concluding a new agreement either today or tomorrow.
As to the details of the negotiations, Chen said Jan was unwilling to comment on the matter.
The negotiations, which began on June 25, are the third round of talks between the two sides.
Talks also took place on May 13 and May 24, but were aborted on both occasions as the two sides could not reach a consensus on the role of Taiwan government agencies in the talks.
The current pact has already been temporarily extended twice because of delays in renegotiating the agreement and a third extension is a possibility.
Informed insiders believe, however, that Hong Kong wants to hammer out a new agreement rather than extend the old one, and that a new pact will be forthcoming by the Sunday deadline.
While no details of the negotiations were available, there has been much speculation that part of the problem is Taiwan's insistence that the agreement be in the form of a "main agreement with a supplementary agreement."
The problem is that this is the form usually used between two national governments, and the Hong Kong government does not accord this status to the Taipei authorities.
The Hong Kong side is believed to prefer a simpler form of agreement signed between the private sector organizations involved in the agreement.
The present five-year pact was signed in 1996 by China Airlines (CAL) and EVA Airways and two Hong Kong airlines, Cathay Pacific and Dragon Airlines.
The four airlines currently operate more than 80 percent of the flights on the so-called "golden route," the second most profitable air route in the world.
At present, CAL operates 105 round-trip passenger flights and 6 cargo flights between Taipei and Hong Kong every week while EVA airways has only 16 slots for passenger flights and none for cargo flights.
The May 25 crash of CAL flight CI116 could hurt the airline's chances of winning any new flights that may come as a result of a new aviation agreement.
According to Taiwan's Civil Aviation Law and international aviation practice, any airlines that experience a crash will lose their right to enjoy any increased flights in the negotiation of a new aviation pact of the given routes for one year.
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