Print

Mail

wiki links

MAC head slams Beijing proposal on cross-strait flights

Beijing's invitation to local airline representatives to discuss cross-strait charter flights is a move geared toward bringing about unification with China, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) chairman Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said yesterday.

Wu was responding to a fax that China's Civil Aviation Association executive director Pu Zhaozhou (浦照洲) had sent yesterday to the recently-elected Taipei Airlines Association (TAA) Chairman Tony Fan (范志強).

Pu oversees Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau affairs under Beijing's Civil Aviation Administration.

The fax congratulated Fan on his new post and urged him to lead a delegation to China to discuss the possibility of moving toward regularly scheduled cross-strait charter flights.

Pu said in the fax that he looked forward to a prompt reply.

While Beijing has expressed willingness to cooperate on increasing the frequency of cross-strait passenger flights, particularly over holidays and weekends, Taipei has been leaning more toward bringing about cross-strait cargo flights.

Taiwan recently rebuffed Beijing's proposal to operate cross-strait charter flights around Tomb Sweeping Day on Tuesday.

Fan said that he would not reply to Pu's fax immediately, as the TAA takes a passive role in cross-strait relations. He said that the TAA would wait for the government to issue instructions on the matter.

"There is no way I would do anything right now. The government hasn't authorized the association to do anything," Fan said yesterday.

"In any case, we wouldn't be able to meaningfully achieve anything without first securing government authorization," he said.

The government had supervised and authorized Fan's predecessor, former TAA chairman and Mandarin Airlines president Michael Lo (樂大信), to negotiate a landmark agreement with Pu in Macau in January.

The talks had led to the first non-stop cross-strait flights in over 50 years during the Lunar New Year holiday.

The MAC did not seem keen to proceed with discussions on cross-strait charter flights yesterday.

"There is currently no contact across the Strait, and Pu suddenly writes a letter to a non-governmental organization, one that has not been authorized by the government to negotiate," Wu said yesterday at the legislature.

"There is no way the council could agree to this against its principles," Wu said.

He said that in light of Beijing's moves to bring about unification, building domestic consensus among leaders of both the opposition and governing parties was the government's foremost task.
This story has been viewed 1686 times.