Kenneth Lieberthal, former senior director of the US National Security Council, urged China and Taiwan yesterday to come up with "confidence-building measures" to reduce cross-strait confrontation.
He also denied reports that he had proposed that both sides sign an "arms control agreement."
"Both Taiwan and China should encourage their specialists to begin to think through what kinds of confidence-building measures would make sense" to ensure cross-strait stability, Lieberthal said yesterday.
Lieberthal denied media reports that he had raised the idea that both sides should sign arms control agreements during his meeting with President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) on Wednesday.
Lieberthal, together with another five members of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, completed their visits to Taipei yesterday evening.
With the exception of Lieberthal, the rest of the team will visit China to meet high-ranking officials as part of the so-called "track two" shuttle diplomacy across the Taiwan Strait.
The group said they could help foster resumption of cross-strait talks and that their mission in Taiwan was only to hear various views on cross-strait issues, not to "pass messages" to China.
"We are here to listen and to foster dialogue. We are not to mediate, and we are not here to give specific suggestions," said Winston Lord, co-chairman of the International Rescue Committee.
The group also includes Douglas Paal, president of the Asia-Pacific Policy Center; Robert Scalapino, professor emeritus at the Institute of East Asian Studies of the University of California, Berkeley; and George Schwab and Donald Zagoria from Columbia University.
The committee members visited Taiwan and China in June and April this year in the course of two previous rounds of "track two" visits to both Taipei and Beijing.
Apart from the president, the group met with Vice President Annette Lu (
They also met with Mainland Affairs Council Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (
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