SEF's `top negotiator' to stay on for another term

Koo Chen-fu (辜振甫), Straits Exchange Foundation chairman, and foundation Secretary-General Shi Hwei-yow (許惠佑) will each be retained to serve another term.

According to sources from the Mainland Affairs, Council Koo and Shi are being retained in consideration of "maintaining stability" in the development of cross-strait relations.

Koo has been acclaimed as "Taiwan's top negotiator" over the past 12 years since the inception of the foundation in 1979 .

The tycoon turned ambassador-at-large met with Wang Daohan (汪道涵), who was appointed by Beijing in 1979 to head China's intermediary body, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, in Singapore in April 1993, for the historic, ice-breaking rendezvous across the Taiwan Strait, better known as the first "Koo-Wang meeting."

Koo was supposed to meet with Wang for a second "Koo-Wang" meeting sometime after 1995, but the proposed meeting never took place as Beijing unilaterally announced a suspension of the meeting in May 1995.

The announcement came after then president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) made a landmark visit to the US, a trip Beijing considered as a move promoting independence.

Describing Koo, 85, as "the one and the only" Taiwan negotiator with China, council officials persuaded Koo to keep his position after he had expressed his intention of retiring due to health and age considerations.