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SEF chief to invite ARATS head to Taiwan for a visit

Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) yesterday lauded the previous Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government for paving the way on making the resumption of cross-strait negotiations possible and said he plans to personally invite his counterpart, the head of China's Association on Relations across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS), Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), to visit Taiwan.

The SEF and ARATS are the only quasi-official organizations authorized by Taipei and Beijing to represent the respective governments in cross-strait talks.

Chiang, speaking to the press on the eve of the four-day Beijing trip, said the DPP government had made significant contributions in reviving the mechanism for official cross-strait talks, which had been frozen since 1999.

Even after the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) won the presidential election on March 22, Chiang said, “many DPP teams continued to work hard to negotiate with the other side.”

Chiang will lead a 19-member delegation comprised of officials from the Mainland Affairs Council, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, the National Immigration Agency and the Tourism Bureau to Beijing today to close a deal on commencing direct weekend charter flights for passengers and allowing Chinese tourists to come to Taiwan starting next month.

The delegation will arrive in Beijing at 3pm this afternoon and the Chiang-Chen meeting is scheduled to take place tomorrow morning before the official negotiations start.

“I will invite Chen to come visit Taiwan at a time of his convenience,” Chiang said.

Chen would be the first ARATS chairman to visit Taiwan if he accepted Chiang’s invitation.

The negotiation process will be co-led by the SEF Secretary-General Kao Koong-lian (高孔廉) and his Chinese equivalent from ARATS. Chiang and Chen will not directly participate in the talks and will not meet again until the signing of the deal on Friday morning.

As of press time, neither ARATS nor the SEF had released any names or position titles of the Chinese delegation.

The first phase of negotiations will focus on direct passenger flights followed by tourism in the afternoon. Kao revealed that Taiwan would allow Chinese airline companies to set up branches in Taiwan because many Taiwanese airliners have already done so in China.

Chiang said that although the two sides will not sign a deal on direct cargo transport during this round of negotiations, the topic would be thoroughly debated.

So far the SEF has been unwilling to confirm a possible meeting between Chiang and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), however, a high-ranking SEF official has told the press that “the highlight of the trip will not take place until after the signing,” hinting that Chiang and Hu would most likely meet on Friday afternoon.
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