TT: You've also mentioned that it's damaging for Taipei to provide Beijing with opportunities to divide and conquer. Could you elaborate on that?
Cossa: I think that obviously Taiwan is a new democracy. Even in an old democracy like the United States, you have Joseph Biden in Korea a couple of weeks ago criticizing the Bush administration. This is what happens in politics.
But I think that there really needs to be a more common understanding among the political parities on the need to develop some type of a bipartisan or non-partisan foreign policy toward the mainland and to adopt the concept that at least politics ends at the water's edge, that water being the Taiwan Strait.
It's going to be very difficult. I don't just blame the KMT or the New Party. I think the DPP is as much to blame. Quite honestly there is as much disagreement and disorganization within the DPP as there is among the various parties.
And as democracy has evolved, and as there has been as much disagreement within the political parties and among the political parties, this has become a very challenging task. But that's one that I think Taiwan politicians have not paid enough attention to. And the failure to do that jeopardizes your own national security.
TT: How do you respond, then, to the view that Taiwan is a young democracy with a lot to learn, whose politicians sometimes have to adopt certain positions in order to distinguish themselves from one another, and that consensus building, in any case, is never an easy task?
Cossa: I don't think it's the inability among all the Taiwan politicians that I've ever met to forge a political consensus on how to deal with the mainland ... I think they have a responsibility to at least develop the framework and the boundaries beyond which they shouldn't go, and I think that's what's missing.
TT: The media has argued that the recent Economic Development Advisory Council has served as the first step for Chen's administration, as well as the opposition camps, to be engaged in solving a common task faced by the country. Do you agree with that?
Cossa: I agree with that. I think this is a very positive step. There will be a lot of politics played with it, but it has been an effort to move ahead. But what I'll add somewhat sarcastically is if Taiwan politicians, leaders and scholars can get together when money is at stake, why can't you also do it when your security is at stake? One would think that should be at least an equally motivating factor, and thus far it hasn't been.
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