Officials from Taiwan and China are to meet today to discuss a deadly Kinmen County incident after the original meeting set for Wednesday last week was postponed due to Typhoon Gaemi, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said.
Both sides have agreed to hold the rescheduled meeting at the Everrich Golden Lake Hotel in Kinmen, the original location. They would discuss outstanding issues relating to the incident that left two Chinese dead on Feb. 14, the council said in a statement released on Sunday.
The representatives of the deceased fishers’ families would arrive in Kinmen yesterday to ensure smooth and thorough talks, the statement added.
Photo: Chung Li-hua, Taipei Times
Also yesterday, “personnel from both sides would inspect the meeting venue and discuss and confirm the schedule of activities for the next day,” the council said, without providing information on which officials would attend the meeting.
Since negotiations over the incident were suspended in March, the Ocean Affairs Council and the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) continued to communicate through designated channels with Chinese authorities, the statement said.
Both sides were originally scheduled to meet on Wednesday last week, but the impact of Typhoon Gaemi led to the suspension of cross-strait ferry services, preventing the family members of the deceased Chinese fishers and the delegation of Chinese officials from reaching Kinmen, the council said in a previous statement.
The council’s latest statement came after the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) reported earlier in the day that the meeting had been rescheduled and that an agreement would be reached.
The Chinese side would be represented by a director-level representative from the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS), China’s semiofficial body handling technical and business matters with Taiwan.
The Taiwanese side would include officials from the MAC, the CGA, and ARATS’ counterpart, the Straits Exchange Foundation, the report said.
The report also quoted a source familiar with the matter saying that if everything proceeds smoothly, the bodies of the deceased Chinese fishers and the boat involved in the incident would be returned to China the same day as the meeting.
Consolation payments would also be given to the families of the deceased, the report said.
The boat incident occurred on Feb. 14 when a CGA vessel pursued a Chinese boat that entered prohibited waters off Kinmen.
The CGA said that the unnamed and unregistered Chinese boat fled after refusing a coast guard patrol vessel’s request to board the boat, setting off a high-speed chase that ended when the boat collided with the CGA vessel and capsized in waters near Kinmen, causing the deaths of two Chinese crew members.
The other two Chinese on the boat who survived the incident returned to China on Feb. 20, while the bodies of the deceased crew and the boat remained in Kinmen for further investigation.
The incident raised tensions around Kinmen, which is less than 10km from Xiamen, China.
Officials representing the two sides held several rounds of talks in February and March, but failed to reach an agreement on matters relating to the case, including how to compensate the families of the deceased.
The Chinese representative in the previous rounds of negotiations, Quanzhou City Taiwan Affairs Office Deputy Director Li Zhaohui (李朝暉), blamed the Taiwanese authorities for failing to provide an acceptable explanation of what happened and for creating obstacles to the demands from the families of the deceased.
However, the CGA has issued a statement saying that the Chinese side made demands that did not comply with Taiwan’s legal system, which made it impossible for both sides to reach an agreement.
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