A lack of trust between Taiwan and China is the main obstacle to improving cross-strait relations, President-elect Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) told a group of influential US foreign policy experts yesterday.
Speaking to a four-member delegation led by former US ambassador to China, Winston Lord, Chen pointed to Beijing's backtracking on the 1992 consensus to allow individual interpretations of "one China" as an example of mistrust between the two sides.
He said while Taiwan had accepted the agreement, Chinese media reports indicate that Beijing now denies that a consensus was ever made.
"Beijing rescinded what it said. This is the obstacle to improving cross-strait relations -- the lack of mutual trust -- and the reason for this stems from the PRC side," Chen said.
Immediately following the closed-doors meeting, Chen also met with Anthony Lake, former National Security Advisor to the US president, but details of their discussion were not revealed.
Aides to Chen denied media speculation that US arms sales to Taiwan were discussed in the meeting.
They emphasized the private capacity of Lake's visit, arranged by the KMT-affiliated China Development Corporation.
Chen, meanwhile, reiterated the new government's rejection of the "one China" principle and emphasized that Beijing's attempt to define Taiwan as a part of the PRC is a "very serious problem."
"Maybe people find it hard to accept why I insist that `one China' cannot be a principle but can a topic of discussion," Chen said, while referring to Beijing's definition of "one China" outlined in a 1993 white paper on "The Taiwan Question and Reunification."
The paper defined -- and Beijing persistently insists -- that there is only "one China," with the PRC as the sole legitimate government and Taiwan as part of China.
"I want to ask the US and the international community: When the people of Taiwan have elected their 10th president, can we still accept that Taiwan is a part of China?" Chen asked the delegation.
The delegation is from the influential think tank, the National Committee on American Foreign Policy (NCAFP), which conducts a biannual round table that has become the so-called "second track" in US-Taiwan relations.
Foreign minister-designate Tien Hung-mao (
Chen welcomed the additional channel of cross-strait communication, saying he would also "encourage and support additional channels such as second or even third or multi track interaction." The "first track" talks between Taiwan's quasi-governmental Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and its Chinese counterpart, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS), have been in a freeze since President Lee Teng-hui's (
Heading to Beijing today to meet with Chinese leaders, Lord said he hoped the trips would "contribute to a positive atmosphere," and that resolution to the cross-strait situation "must be resolved directly and peacefully by the two sides."
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