TAIPEI (AFP) — Taiwan and China will next month resume direct talks after more than a decade, the island's top China policy-maker Lai Shin-yuan said Friday.
"You will see very soon in June the beginning of institutional negotiations between the two sides," Lai, chairwoman of Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council, told reporters, three days after she took office.
Top of the agenda would be starting weekend passenger charter and cargo flights as well as allowing more Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan, she said.
"I'm cautiously optimistic that the three goals can be reached in July... that's not wishful thinking. We have (a) kind of understanding (with China)," Lai said.
Direct transport links have been cut since the two sides split in 1949 at the end of a civil war. Taiwanese wishing to fly to the mainland must transit via somewhere such as Hong Kong, while visits here by Chinese tourists are severely restricted.
In the absence of official contacts, two quasi-official bodies -- the Straits Exchange Foundation in Taipei and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits in Beijing -- were authorised by their respective governments to hold a series of rapprochement talks in the 1990s.
The two sides held a landmark dialogue in 1993 in Singapore, but Beijing suspended follow-up talks in protest at a 1995 US visit by Taiwan's then-president, seeing it as a move promoting independence.
"On May 26 we will authorise the Straits Exchange Foundation to quickly engage with its Chinese counterpart," Lai said, referring to groundwork to prepare for the talks in June.
Lai's remarks came a day after China said it was preparing to resume direct talks with Taiwan. Relations between the two sides appear to be improving since the inauguration on Tuesday of President Ma Ying-jeou of the China-friendly Kuomintang (KMT), who has vowed to mend ties with Beijing.
"Currently, good developing momentum is emerging in cross-strait relations, bringing a rare and important opportunity," said Chen Yunlin, head of China's ruling Communist Party Central Committee's Taiwan Work Office.
Lai said she believed the targeted opening of weekend charter flights across the Strait in July -- the first test of improved ties -- would be achieved.
"We're very much looking forward to the resumption of negotiations between the two sides," she said.
Lai also urged Beijing "to seize the historical opportunity" of reopening dialogue.
She however played down the scheduled meeting between KMT chief Wu Poh-hsiung and Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing next week, saying the SEF was the only body authorised to engage in formal negotiations.
Wu will become the first ruling party chief from Taiwan to travel to China.
Asked to comment on the rise of the island's giant neighbour, Lai said China was an emerging power on the world arena not just in Asia.
"China can be a friend, but it can be a threat as well. It depends on how Beijing deals with issues concerning the other countries in the region and the rest of the world," she said.
China still claims Taiwan as part of its territory awaiting reunification and has in the past threatened to invade if the island declares independence.
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