Taiwan will not open the median line of the Taiwan Strait to air traffic because the area is used for training by the country’s air force, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said on Thursday.
At present, direct flights between Taiwan and China are routed over the East China Sea and South China Sea rather than directly across the Taiwan Strait.
“We have told [Beijing] very clearly before that we will not open the median line. We are not trying to make things difficult. It’s about national security,” Ma said on Thursday in Panama City at a gathering with Taiwanese reporters during his trip to Central America.
Ma made the remarks in response to a call by Wang Yi (王毅) the director of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, that Taiwan open the median line because of increasing numbers of direct cross-strait flights.
As to the establishment of a military mutual trust mechanism, Ma said such a framework could be forged only after the signing of a peace agreement with China.
“While the two sides indeed have to strike a cross-strait peace pact, we believe it’s not an issue of great urgency at the moment,” Ma said.
Ma said the government would focus its efforts on the negotiation of an economic cooperation framework agreement.
“What’s more urgent at the moment is to solve the issues that matter more to the public. Normalizing cross-strait economic relations, for example, is very important to Taiwan,” Ma said.
When asked whether he would meet Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) in his capacity as Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman, Ma said he had no immediate plans to meet Hu. It would be better for leaders across the Taiwan Strait to meet after the two sides have found solutions to certain fundamental issues, he said.
Ma is expected to take over the KMT chairmanship after an election on July 26.
Senior officials accompanying Ma on his trip said Taiwan could not agree to flights routed directly across the Taiwan Strait because of national security concerns.
“China reserves 90 percent of its airspace for military training, while we only have the airspace on our side of the Taiwan Strait meridian,” said one official, adding that Taiwan could not afford to budge on this issue.
Noting that both Taiwan and the US are concerned about regional security in the Taiwan Strait, the official said steadiness was more important than speed in cross-strait development at this stage.
In Taipei, Democratic Progressive Party acting spokesman Chuang Suo-hang (莊碩漢) said if Taiwan opened the middle line of the Strait to China, Taiwan’s defense would collapse, adding that the proposal raised by Beijing was unthinkable.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY RICH CHANG AND CNA
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
SECURITY: The purpose for giving Hong Kong and Macau residents more lenient paths to permanent residency no longer applies due to China’s policies, a source said The government is considering removing an optional path to citizenship for residents from Hong Kong and Macau, and lengthening the terms for permanent residence eligibility, a source said yesterday. In a bid to prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from infiltrating Taiwan through immigration from Hong Kong and Macau, the government could amend immigration laws for residents of the territories who currently receive preferential treatment, an official familiar with the matter speaking on condition of anonymity said. The move was part of “national security-related legislative reform,” they added. Under the amendments, arrivals from the Chinese territories would have to reside in Taiwan for
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