China’s top official for Taiwan affairs yesterday said that Taipei should provide a “responsible” explanation for accidentally launching a missile into the Taiwan Strait earlier in the day, calling it a “serious” matter.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) said the incident had “a serious impact,” coming at a time when Beijing has stressed the importance of maintaining peaceful development of cross-strait relations, with the so-called “1992 consensus” as the political foundation.
“This requires Taiwan to provide a responsible explanation on what had happened,” Zhang said in response to reporters’ questions on the incident on the sidelines of an event promoting cross-strait student exchanges.
Photo: AP
Asked if Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) had notified the Taiwan Affairs Office of the incident, he replied that he “had no information.”
In Taipei, the MAC yesterday said in a statement 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 — of the incident and ask it to help pass the information to Chinese government agencies.
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