High-ranking government officials involved in cross-strait affairs revealed yesterday that President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) remarks on June 27, in which he claimed to recognize the 1992 consensus with Beijing on "one China with each side having its own interpretation" (一個中國，各自表述), was regarded as a crisis by members of the National Security Council (NSC).
Officials told the Taipei Times that the NSC even held an emergency meeting on June 28 to discuss how to tell the public that "the president's remarks do not mean we are making new concessions to China."
"In this meeting, the president said that he neither intended to concede anything nor try to re-explain the meaning of the new government's cross-strait policy," officials said. "He stressed that what he said was the same as his remarks made at the June 20 press conference."
Chen said when receiving foreign guests at the Presidential Office on June 27 that the new government was willing to recognize the 1992 consensus made by Taiwan's Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and Beijing's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS).
Chen told his guests: "That [consensus] is `one China with each side having its own interpretation.' However, mainland China did not recognize it and proposed its own `one China' policy to replace the 1992 consensus."
"That `one China' policy states that the Republic of China is a part of the Peoples Republic of China, a position that is absolutely unacceptable to most Taiwanese," the president added.
Next day most reports said that President Chen had drawn a new bottom line -- to return to the old government's stance -- and speculated that Chen would accept Beijing's "one China" principle.
However, President Chen said in his first press conference after being in office for one month that there was no consensus reached in 1992 except not to let disagreement over different interpretations of "one China" stop talks from taking place.
"If a consensus was reached, it was that each side could have its own interpretation of `one China' ... If we are to say that there was an agreement, then it was that we agreed to disagree," the President said in the same press conference.
Officials told the Taipei Times yesterday that NSC members immediately discussed with officials of the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) and SEF on the morning of June 28 the possible reaction from Taiwan's politicians and the Chinese government towards Chen's remarks.
"National Security Council officials deemed this event a crisis," a SEF official said. "They were worried that most people would regard the President's new remarks as a concession, as a formal recognition of Beijing's `one China' policy." Officials said that members of the NSC thought the government should publicly clarify the president's remarks and therefore wrote a four-point announcement to announce that the government's stance had not changed since president Chen's inauguration.
"In the evening President Chen discussed this matter with only a few high-ranking officials at the Presidential Office and then assigned MAC Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to make her four-point announcement," said a Presidential Office source.
This announcement said that the new government had never admitted both sides of the Taiwan Strait had reached any consensus on the "one China" issue.
However, a source in the Presidential Office denied that President Chen had said anything different from before. "The president firmly told us that the tone was the same as his first press conference after having been in office for one month on June 20."
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