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Beijing rejects President Chen's call for dialogue

China's state media yesterday rejected President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) Double Ten National Day call for peace talks with Beijing, saying it was "too insincere and vague to be treated seriously."

In a speech on Sunday, Chen urged China to begin peace talks so the rivals can avoid war.

"Because we can't com-municate, there's a lot of misunderstanding," Chen said.

As is often the case, the Beijing government has not responded directly to the overture.

However, the state-run China Daily, often used as a medium to communicate the country's policies, ran a front-page commentary citing researchers accusing Chen of "playing word games."

"The researchers said Chen's peace overture was `too insincere and too vague to be treated seriously by the mainland,'" it said.

It added, "He did not spell out what he meant by the proposal."

The China Daily said Chen's refusal to accept the "one China" principle, which it contends was accepted by both sides in a 1992 "consensus" would prevent progress toward a rapprochement.

"If he continues to reject the consensus reached at the 1992 meeting as he did before, his proposal will be tantamount to nonsense and will be of no use to help jump-start" talks, the paper cited Liu Guoshen, president of the Academy of Taiwan Research at Xiamen University, as saying. "It seems that Chen is playing with words again."

Wu Nengyuan (吳能遠), head of Taiwan studies at China's Fujian Academy of Social Sciences, acknowledged the apparent softening of Chen's stance: "The key issue remains accepting the `one China' principle. If Taiwan does not accept it, other statements have no meaning and also no sincerity."
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