Pres'ident Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) has appealed to China to start a dialogue with Taiwan again at a reception with international scholars yesterday.
Meanwhile, local government authorities have estimated that a dialogue would be forthcoming in the next six months.
"After the Executive Yuan re-organizes and before the Chinese Communist Party holds its 16th National Congress (中共十六大), there will be a chance to start cross-strait dialogue again between March and May," said Chen Min-tong (陳明通), the Mainland Affairs Council vice chairman.
Local government bodies believe that the first six months next year will be a crucial period for possible talks similar to the historical background of the Koo-Wong talks in 1998.
High-ranking government officials say that the time for cross-strait dialogue is ripe because the relationship between Beijing and Washington is stable, Beijing's social and political conditions are steady and the Chen Shui-bian government is stronger now after the legislative elections.
"The two sides could start dialogue easily with a tiny stepping stone," said a ranking official at the Mainland Affairs Council, who asked not to be identified.
"Both Beijing and Taiwan's domestic conditions are stable enough for dialogues to restart," the government official said.
In June 1998, then-US president Bill Clinton visited China, which drew the two countries closer together.
At the beginning of 1998, then-premier Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) remarked that the "two sides should re-start dialogue from where it broke off."
After this remark, in February 1998, China's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait sent its Taiwan counterpart, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), a letter saying unconditionally: "Let's resume exchanges, let's prepare for talks, and let's prepare for the Koo-Wang meetings."
In October of that year, SEF Chairman Koo Chen-fu (辜振甫) made a high-profile, ice-breaking trip across the Strait.
His Chinese counterpart Wang promised to visit Taiwan the following year but cancelled the journey after former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) defined cross-strait relations as being state-to-state in nature.
Meanwhile, Shi Hwei-yow (許惠祐), secretary-general of the semi-official Straits Exchange Foundation, said that current conditions are not really comparable to the 1998 summit.
"In 1998, Beijing thought that it would be trapped by Taiwan's delaying tactic ... if it didn't restart dialogue with Taiwan.
"However, for now, Beijing hasn't really gotten what it wanted from the US after the Sept. 11 incident, and both sides [Taiwan and China] have entered the WTO, which is not so beneficial to Beijing [to restart dialogue]," Shu said.
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