A Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) official said on Thursday that he would need to learn more before commenting on reports that a Chinese official had said the two cross-strait intermediary bodies — the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) — should set up offices on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
MAC Deputy Chairman Liu Teh-shun (劉德勳) was referring to a report by China News Service that quoted ARATS Vice President Zheng Lizhong (鄭立中) as saying in a directors’ meeting in Beijing that ARATS would study setting up offices in Taiwan, while the SEF could set up offices in China.
Both the SEF and ARATS are quasi-official bodies set up by their respective governments to deal with bilateral exchanges in the absence of formal ties.
Liu said he had not seen the report, but noted that cross-strait relations would be dealt with cautiously and that he would not comment before learning more about Zheng’s statement.
“This is not an issue that has been previously talked about,” Liu said, adding that Zheng had not formally conveyed such a standpoint to the SEF.
Meanwhile, at a separate setting, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) said regulations that state that cross-strait agreements take effect automatically one month after they are signed should be revised to allow the legislature to screen all such pacts.
Wang said the legislature should “substantially” screen all agreements signed during talks between the SEF and ARATS.
Under the Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (台灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), all cross-strait agreements become effective 30 days after they are signed, whether lawmakers approve them or not.
The legislature has no power to nullify agreements and this has caused concern, especially after the two sides held their first round of talks on Wednesday on a proposed cross-strait economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA).
An SEF briefing to the legislature on the first round of talks is scheduled to take place on Wednesday.
In related news, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) proposed “institutionalizing” the legislature’s monitoring of cross-strait issues by setting up a cross-strait affairs monitoring task force.
DPP spokesman Chuang Shuo-han (莊碩漢) said the party would prefer such a task force rather than to ask those involved in ECFA policy formulation and negotiations to provide regular briefings.
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