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MAC says it didn't endorse pan-blues' direct flights plan

The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday denied media reports that it had endorsed a proposal by opposition parties to scrap the government's authority to issue permits for direct flights across the Taiwan Strait.

The MAC issued a press statement yesterday to deny a report in the Chinese-language Commercial Times newspaper, which said that the council had agreed to relinquish the government's power to permit cross-strait direct flights as stipulated in the Statute Governing Relations between Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (兩岸人民關係條例).

"The authority's permission is an important base for the effective management of cross-strait sea and air transportation ? the media report that said the council had agreed to scrap the permission stipulated in the statute was not true," the statement said.

According to the Commercial Times, MAC Chairman Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) and council Secretary-General Chan Chih-hung (詹志宏) had expressed an attitude of "non-opposition" on Saturday toward the pan-blue camp's proposal to scrap the government's authority to issue permits as stipulated in Article 28 of the statute.

The report said that both officials had agreed it would suffice to incorporate the permission in subsequent rules.

According to the most recent amendment to the statute in 2003, rules governing granting permission for direct sea and air transportation across the Strait were to have been drafted by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications and submitted to the Executive Yuan for approval within 18 months of the adoption of the amendment.

The pan-blue camp accuses the government of deliberately procrastinating on formulating specific rules on how permission would be granted and has insisted its authority to grant permits be removed from the statute.
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