The Presidential Office yesterday said there was no timetable for negotiations on political issues with Beijing after Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) urged both sides of the Taiwan Strait to “create conditions for debunking political problems” when he met former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Singapore on Saturday.
Lien was appointed by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) as his representative to the annual meeting, which Ma cannot attend because of Beijing’s suppression.
Presidential Office Spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) yesterday said the Ma government’s attitude toward cross-strait negotiations was that economic issues should precede political ones, to tackle easier and urgent issues first and then steadily move toward more difficult and less pressing ones.
“President Ma has been consistent on his position on this matter since 2006,” Wang said.
Wang was referring to a speech Ma gave at the London School of Economics and Political Science in February 2006 in his capacity as KMT chairman.
Ma said there was no timetable for unification with China and that Taiwan would prefer to maintain the “status quo” until the timing and conditions were favorable. Before Taiwan would consider unification with China, he said, any plan must be given public approval in a referendum.
Ma also reiterated his concern over China’s military position, saying the intermediate goal was for both sides to negotiate and put into effect a viable peace agreement that could serve as a framework guiding cross-strait interaction in the decades ahead.
Wang emphasized that when Ma mentioned the peace agreement in his speech in 2006, he said: “For the cross-strait peace framework to be sustainable, the political liberty of the Republic of China [ROC] on Taiwan must be satisfactorily accommodated.”
In the speech, however, Ma also said that to create the conditions for “reunification” with China, it would be necessary for the ROC to be recognized as a “political partner under the so-called ‘one China’ framework.”
While Lien told reporters after his meeting with Hu that Ma had said on his presidential campaign trail that the issue of a peace agreement would inevitably surface within the next 10 years, Wang said yesterday that, after contacting Lien’s office, the Presidential Office understood that the “intention” of Lien’s remark was no different to Ma’s “position” on the matter.
Wang said that Lien later told reporters that political issues should be tackled when the timing and conditions were ripe.
At a separate setting yesterday, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said it was too early to contemplate negotiations with China on political issues because any solution would first have to find a consensus in Taiwan.
Tsai said it was evident that the economic relationship between Taiwan and China had long since become a political relationship.
“Our government still believes that working together with China on issues such as an economic cooperation framework agreement only has benefits, and that we need not pay any political consequence,” Tsai said.
Tsai advised the Ma government that for any agreement to be made with China, whether it be political or economic, there must be a consensus domestically.
“Without a domestic consensus, the foundations of the nation would be eroded,” Tsai said.
“We want to remind the government that China’s ambitions are obvious. It’s becoming more obvious over time that Beijing wants us to pay a political price,” she said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
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