Straits talks yield full agreement

By Wu Jiao (China Daily/Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-06-13 07:16

Pang Chien-kuo, SEF deputy secretary-general, said the representative offices would facilitate people exchanges and travel across the Straits.

Established in the early 1990s, the ARATS and the SEF are authorized semi-official bodies engaged in talks on cross-Straits exchanges.

But their exchanges were suspended in 1999 when the then Taiwan leader Lee Teng-hui redefined the two sides' ties as a "special state-to-state relationship".

Yesterday, Chen said the two sides have taken the approach of "economy before politics, the easy problems before the difficult ones".

The talks in the morning were followed by consultations on cross-Straits weekend chartered flights and mainland tourists' travel to Taiwan, with both sides "reaching full agreement on all terms".

The two sides are scheduled to sign related agreements today.

Chiao Jen-ho, former SEF vice-chairman and secretary-general, said the talks "face a favorable environment that we had never imagined before".

Chiu Chin-yi, another former SEF vice-chairman and secretary-general, said the dialogue between the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Kuomintang (KMT) had laid a favorable foundation for building trust, which led to the resumption of SEF-ARATS talks.

Xinhua contributed to the story

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