The government planned to dispatch a mission to Manila in an attempt to forge a cooperation pact with its neighbor to avoid future fishery disputes, despite three local fishermen still being detained by the Philippines, sources said.
"I've heard the ministry of foreign affairs here is sending a team to the Philippines for further talks," Edgardo Espinosa, de facto Filipino ambassador to Taipei, said in an interview with the Taipei Times.
"The major issue is to seek cooperation on aquaculture and fisheries although no specific provisions have yet emerged," said Espinosa, resident representative and managing director of the Manila Economic and Cultural Office.
Espinosa dubbed the upcoming negotiations as "the start of a set of talks."
With their 200km exclusive economic zones overlapping, Taiwan and the Philippines have to work out a cooperation pact to settle their disputes, Espinosa said.
Espinosa declined to give a timeline as to when it's likely for the pact to be signed.
But Wang Ming-lai (
After more than three years of difficult negotiations with the Philippines, Wang said Taiwan has agreed to exchange agricultural and fishery-technological expertise with the Philippines and assist the nation with training.
A foreign ministry official in charge of fishery issues said the recent mutiny in Manila has dissuaded Taiwan to send a delegation for further talks in the immediate future.
"We have no plan to go there immediately," the official said. "But we'll go for these negotiations sooner or later."
Taiwan and the Philippines signed a MOU on innocent passage of maritime lanes and agricultural and fishery cooperation in 1991.
The memorandum became invalid after the Philippines enacted a marine-resources law in 1998.
When asked whether it's true that Manila planned to release the three remaining Taiwanese fishermen still in detention as claimed by a foreign ministry official earlier in the week, Espinosa declined to give an answer.
He said the court in the Philippines handling illegal entry would decide how to deal with the matter.
Several Taiwanese fishing boats have recently escaped from detention in the northern Philippines, where they were held under suspicion of illegally fishing in Philippine territorial waters.
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