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SEF still has a role to play, forum argues

The Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) is necessary, participants attending a cross-strait forum said yesterday, a day after former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) said it should be abolished and replaced with official negotiation channels.

SEF Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) told reporters after delivering the opening speech that the role of the foundation was that of a “white glove,” or proxy agency, authorized by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) to deal with Beijing in the absence of official negotiation channels.

“Our role is to build a bridge between both sides so government officials can sit down and talk face-to-face,” Chiang said. “This is not the first time both sides have engaged in negotiations. There are various occasions in the past that officials have talked about technical issues.”

In addition to Beijing, Chiang said Taiwan adopts the same model when dealing with Washington and Tokyo.

During his service at the Bureau of Foreign Trade under the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Chiang said negotiations were conducted between the US representatives from the American Institute in Taiwan and Taiwan’s envoy to the US, while Japanese emissaries from Japan’s Interchange Association led negotiations with their Taiwanese counterparts from the Association of East Asian Relations under the ministry. All those agencies were semi-official organizations, Chiang said.

Chiang made the remarks in response to questions about Lee’s comment on Saturday that cross-strait negotiations must be conducted on a “state-to-state” basis and that the SEF was “redundant.”

Chiang said yesterday that cross-strait issues were diverse, including education, investment, trade and finance. The upcoming meeting between him and his Chinese counterpart, Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), will cover different topics, he said. They include direct sea transportation links, direct aviation routes, cargo charter flights and expansion of the weekend charter flights, as well as cooperation on postal services and food safety.

Participants agreed that it was necessary to keep the SEF.

SEF adviser Pang Chien-kuo (龐建國) said that until both sides of the Taiwan Strait recognize each other and sign political treaties, it was necessary to have a proxy agency to negotiate with Beijing.

Pang said that mutual recognition should be open, adding that it could be between two states, or two federations, or two equal but separate regions of a unified nation.

Before both sides enter such a stage and during the period of “mutual non-denial” of each other’s existence, Pang said, the existence of the SEF is necessary, but its role will change.

“In the past, only members of the SEF and ARATS conducted talks, but now government officials from both sides are at the negotiating table. The SEF’s role is to set the stage,” he said.

MAC Deputy Chairman Liu Te-shun (劉德勳) said that both sides were still at the stage of negotiating administrative issues.

If both can build mutual confidence from equal negotiations and practical management of problems, it will lay the groundwork for normalization of cross-strait relations, he said.

Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳), director of the Graduate Institute of China Studies at Tamkang University, said the SEF was necessary, unless both sides did not want to negotiate.

However, he said that cross-strait negotiations must be authorized by the government, with the participation of government officials, ratified by the administration and carried out by government agencies if any agreement is to be reached.
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