`Track two' team to begin journey to Beijing and Taipei

A group of seven US scholars and former government officials is slated today to begin their visit to China and Taiwan as part of "track two" shuttle diplomacy across the Taiwan Strait, sources said yesterday.

The group, under the aegis of the influential New-York based think tank National Committee on American Foreign Policy (NCAFP), is to first visit Beijing and Shanghai before reaching Taipei on May 1 for a five-day trip, sources said.

The delegation is to hold a press conference at the CKS airport on the morning of May 5 prior to the group's departure from Taiwan, a foreign ministry official said.

Among the visiting experts is Kurt Campbell, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asia and Pacific affairs, who is senior vice president of the center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

The group also includes Winston Lord, former US ambassador to China; NCAFP President George Schwab; NCAFP Trustee Donald Zagoria;and Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum CSIS.

Robert Scalapino, professor emeritus at the Institute of East Asian Studies of the University of California, Berkeley, as well as Derek Mitchell, a senior fellow at the CSIS, are also part of the delegation.

According to government sources, the delegation is to meet President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), Minister of Foreign Affairs Eugene Chien (簡又新), Chairperson of the Mainland Affairs Council Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), members of the National Security Council and others.

Aside from visiting both sides of the Strait, the think tank has held biannual closed-door roundtable meetings in New York on US-China relations and cross-strait issues since the 1996 missile crisis, when China launched missiles into the sea off Taiwan.

But the closed-door meeting originally scheduled to take place last August in New York was cancelled due to refusal by the Beijing side to take part in the meeting, sources said.

Former participants in the roundtable meetings in New York offered disparate observations on the group's fresh visit to both Beijing and Taipei.

Tien Hung-mao (田弘茂), Taipei's new representative to London who has taken part in three roundtable meetings in New York, saw the delegation's trip as part of the attempt "to revive the trilateral meeting."

Lin Cheng-yi (林正義), research fellow and director of the Institute of European and American Studies in Academia Sinica, said: "I'm not optimistic about the prospect of the US, Taiwan and China trilateral meeting. Bilateral US-Taiwan and US-China meetings are likely to continue."

Chinese Vice Premier Qian Qichen (錢其琛), during his trip to the US last year, expressed his opposition to the so-called "track two" diplomacy, a statement critics said reflected Beijing's suspicion of the DPP-led government in Taipei.