The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative caucus yesterday said it has a positive view of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) planned meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), adding that China has made a concession by agreeing to meet Ma in a third country.
KMT caucus whip Lai Shyh-bao (賴士葆) said there is no chance that Taiwan will be belittled at the meeting, as it is to take place in Singapore, rather than in Taiwan or China.
“Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) had hoped to meet with [the Chinese leader] during his term and so did former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). That Ma could now meet with the Chinese president is actually a breakthrough in the cross-strait relationship,” Lai said. “That the meeting is to take place in a third country rules out possible controversies and ensures mutual respect will be upheld.”
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
“Ma will be setting up a platform, which is similar to the one established by the Koo talks. It could be used by future leaders of the two sides to meet and discuss substantive issues,” he added, referring to the talks between then-Straits Exchange Foundation chairman Koo Chen-fu (辜振甫) and then-Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits president Wang Daohan (汪道涵)
In response to questions over the timing of the meeting’s announcement, Lai said: “It is Wednesday today and Ma is visiting Singapore on Saturday, which means that the Executive Yuan reported to Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and the Mainland Affairs Council spoke to the caucuses three days ahead of Ma’s trip.”
“[The reporting process] corresponds to the [basic idea of the] oversight mechanism that has been called for by many,” Lai said.
“Besides pre-meeting reporting, the [KMT] caucus has already signed a motion, proposing to have the president present a ‘state of the nation address’ to parliament after he returns from Singapore,” Lai said.
There are two ways the president could come to the legislature to address to the lawmakers; one is on the president’s own initiative and the other when at least a quarter of the legislators propose it and half of the legislature approves the motion, Lai said. “The motion proposed by us will be put on the next Procedure Committee meeting agenda.”
“[Beijing] has for years precluded the possibility of ‘internationalizing’ the ‘Taiwan problem,’ as it deems the problem an internal one, to the extent of considering internationalizing the problem tantamount to [acknowledging] Taiwanese independence,” KMT Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) said.
“However, this time the venue of the meeting is Singapore,” Lin said, adding that if it were any Chinese city, the KMT lawmakers would be the first to oppose the meeting.
Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung and Taoyuan would issue a decision at 8pm on whether to cancel work and school tomorrow due to forecasted heavy rain, Keelung Mayor Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) said today. Hsieh told reporters that absent some pressing reason, the four northern cities would announce the decision jointly at 8pm. Keelung is expected to receive between 300mm and 490mm of rain in the period from 2pm today through 2pm tomorrow, Central Weather Administration data showed. Keelung City Government regulations stipulate that school and work can be canceled if rain totals in mountainous or low-elevation areas are forecast to exceed 350mm in
EVA Airways president Sun Chia-ming (孫嘉明) and other senior executives yesterday bowed in apology over the death of a flight attendant, saying the company has begun improving its health-reporting, review and work coordination mechanisms. “We promise to handle this matter with the utmost responsibility to ensure safer and healthier working conditions for all EVA Air employees,” Sun said. The flight attendant, a woman surnamed Sun (孫), died on Friday last week of undisclosed causes shortly after returning from a work assignment in Milan, Italy, the airline said. Chinese-language media reported that the woman fell ill working on a Taipei-to-Milan flight on Sept. 22
COUNTERMEASURE: Taiwan was to implement controls for 47 tech products bound for South Africa after the latter downgraded and renamed Taipei’s ‘de facto’ offices The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is still reviewing a new agreement proposed by the South African government last month to regulate the status of reciprocal representative offices, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. Asked about the latest developments in a year-long controversy over Taiwan’s de facto representative office in South Africa, Lin during a legislative session said that the ministry was consulting with legal experts on the proposed new agreement. While the new proposal offers Taiwan greater flexibility, the ministry does not find it acceptable, Lin said without elaborating. The ministry is still open to resuming retaliatory measures against South
1.4nm WAFERS: While TSMC is gearing up to expand its overseas production, it would also continue to invest in Taiwan, company chairman and CEO C.C. Wei said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) has applied for permission to construct a new plant in the Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學園區), which it would use for the production of new high-speed wafers, the National Science and Technology Council said yesterday. The council, which supervises three major science parks in Taiwan, confirmed that the Central Taiwan Science Park Bureau had received an application on Friday from TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, to commence work on the new A14 fab. A14 technology, a 1.4 nanometer (nm) process, is designed to drive artificial intelligence transformation by enabling faster computing and greater power
RSS