A Presidential Office spokesman denied yesterday a media report that Beijing messengers have offered to help establish direct contact between Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to pave the way for a cross-strait summit.
Dismissing the report as mere speculation, Chen Wen-tzung (陳文宗), director of the Presidential Office's Department of Public Affairs, said the Presidential Office has not received any such information and has no plan to assign any presidential aides for the mission.
Chen said that President Chen has mentioned on many occasions that cross-strait differences must be resolved through dialogue and that a government-to-government format is inevitable in conducting such talks.
The president welcomes a meeting with Hu as long as it is not subject to any preconditions and believes cross-strait talks must be based on a national consensus and the best interests of the Taiwanese people, Chen said.
Also, Chen said the Hong Kong visit by Presidential Office official Chao Lin (趙麟) from May 18-20 was a private trip.
According to the report, messengers from Beijing proposed that contact be established through presidential aides of both sides, with the possible choices being Hu's premier aide, Ling Jihua (令計劃), and Chen's close aide, Ma Yung-cheng (馬永成).
The report said that Chao might have been assigned with the mission of meeting with some Beijing representatives during his Hong Kong visit.
Also commenting on the report, Lai Ching-te (賴清德), a Democratic Progressive Party legislative caucus whip, urged the media to stop spreading rumors that are not based on fact.
Lai noted that President Chen has said he is not afraid to negotiate with China provided that Taiwan's sovereignty, democracy and peace are secured and that he is willing to meet Hu in a third country.
But this scenario will only be possible through the mediation of the international community, and the visits to China by Chinese Nationalist Party Chairman Lien Chan (
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater