Taiwan has asked China to abide by their bilateral agreement on document notarization, a senior official in charge of Chinese affairs said yesterday.
Speaking at a breakfast meeting with a group of opposition KMT lawmakers, Liu Teh-shun (
"The rejection has become a serious problem," Liu said, adding that the MAC has directed the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) to express Taiwan's concern about the situation to its Chinese counterpart -- the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) -- and China's notaries public associations.
SEF and ARATS are quasi-official organizations authorized by their respective governments to handle cross-strait exchanges in the absence of official ties.
"SEF has asked ARATS and major mainland notaries public associations to abide by the bilateral document verification agreement signed nearly a decade ago," Liu said.
Until early this year, Liu said, cross-strait document notarization had been operating smoothly since the two sides of the Taiwan Strait signed the accord at a historic high-level meeting held in Singapore in April 1993 between SEF Chairman Koo Chen-fu (
Starting late January, Liu said, the Beijing City Notaries Public Association took the lead in rejecting documents issued by Taiwan notaries public on the grounds that the documents carried the Republic of China's official seal.
"The number of documents rejected by mainland notaries public has since increased steadily and the situation is growing worse," he noted.
Liu said Taiwan had informed China of its decision before it began to adopt its current form of notarized documents in 1998. Over the past few years, he said, China had not found any fault with it.
"Until recently, we had not had a single notarized document rejected for bearing the ROC seal," Liu said.
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