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Wu upbeat about visit to China

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) described yesterday the meeting between Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) as "satisfactory" and "successful," adding it was a demonstration of Taiwan's "soft power."

Ma said Wu and his entourage deserved acknowledgment for their efforts in the past six days.

“The success of the KMT is everybody’s success,” Ma said.

Wu, who met Hu in Beijing on Wednesday, visited Ma at the Presidential Office shortly after returning from China yesterday evening.

Wu and his entourage set off for Nanjing, China, last Monday, where he visited the mausoleum of Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙), the founding chairman of the KMT.

The meeting marked the first talks between high-level officials from China and Taiwan since the KMT regime fled to Taiwan following its defeat in the Chinese civil war in 1949.

Hu met Wu in his capacity as head of the Chinese Communist Party, following the “party-to-party” protocol of previous meetings between Chinese leaders and KMT officials.

Both mentioned the weekend charter flights and more Chinese tourists traveling to Taiwan, but left details to Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and its Chinese counterpart, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) to negotiate.

Wu said yesterday that Hu had promised to discuss Taiwan’s participation in international organizations, including the WHO, in future talks.

On weekend charter flights and Chinese tourists, Wu told Ma that although he could not make any promises on behalf of the government, his feeling was that Beijing would do its best to help make the two projects a reality.

Wu said he would leave the rest to the SEF-ARATS talks.

Wu told Ma that in light of the more amiable atmosphere in the Taiwan Strait, he felt it was unlikely that Beijing would launch a missile assault against Taiwan. Wu was referring to the more than 1,300 tactical ballistic missiles China is aiming at Taiwan.

Wu said he had told Beijing that Taiwanese want safety, dignity and international space and that he received a “positive response” from his Chinese counterpart.

Wu, however, said that in response, Beijing had emphasized “the importance of mutual trust and asked Taiwan to make good on its words” before both sides could put aside differences and create a “win-win situation.”

The Chinese people were grateful for the assistance offered by Taiwanese in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Sichuan Province, Wu said.

SEF Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) is scheduled to depart for Beijing on June 11 to conduct talks with his ARATS counterpart.

In a letter from ARATS to the SEF on Thursday, Beijing said it accepted Taiwan’s invitation to hold cross-strait negotiations on weekend passenger charter flights and opening Taiwan to Chinese tourists. It invited SEF representatives to visit Beijing from June 11 to June 14.

The agreement to gather in Beijing in two weeks came a day after Hu and Wu made a verbal agreement on the talks during their meeting in Beijing.

Analysts from China said tensions had clearly eased since Ma’s election, but cautioned that many pitfalls remain on the road to reconciliation and that China’s military build-up near Taiwan would not be scaled down.

“The mainland is confident in Ma’s attitude toward [not seeking] Taiwanese independence. But there are still difficulties that need to be overcome,” said Zhang Wensheng, director of the Institute of Taiwan Studies at Xiamen University.

“As to the military build-up, it will continue because the military build-up is ... aimed at [preventing] Taiwanese independence,” he said.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA AND AFP



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