Hopes for Taiwan-China peace surge after polls
Hopes for Taiwan-China peace surge after polls
TAIPEI (Reuter): Hopes for a peaceful new dawn across the Taiwan Strait surged yesterday, with Taipei offering reconciliation and Beijing announcing a full stop to weeks of menacing war games.
The end on schedule of eight days of military exercises in the northern Taiwan Strait halts 17 days of maneuvers which failed in their aim of turning voters against President Lee Teng-hui, who was elected in a landslide on Saturday.
China, unlike when it declared the end to previous exercises, did not announce any future operations -- reducing the chances of a confrontation between China and U.S. warships now off Taiwan.
Reacting to China's announcement, Kao Koong-lian of the cabinet's Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), called on China to use this moment to embrace peaceful methods of developing bilateral relations.
"We hope they can move toward the positive side and use peace to develop the cross-straits relations," Kao, deputy head of the MAC, told Reuters by telephone.
In an unexpected appeal, a top Taiwan official said China's cherished dream of reunification could be achieved in just four years -- so long as Beijing agreed to hold democratic presidential elections.
"We want to tell the communist party that China will reunify very soon. Four years from now we can reunify," Provincial Governor James Soong said.
"As long as China can make up its mind four years from now to elect the president of all China with all the Chinese in Taiwan -- that will be the time of the real reunification of China," he told a rally in southern Taiwan.
Soong, a close ally of president Lee, was reiterating Taipei's long-held tenet that China can reunify only under a democratic system. But it marked the first time a date had been officially mooted.
China has made it clear since the crushing of pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989 that it does not see Western-style democracy as an option.
Lee's poll victory with 54 percent of the vote on Saturday and the immediate moves of his government to ease the worst Taiwan Strait crisis in decades soothed this island's financial markets.
Taiwan's stock index leapt to its highest level in over two months and the Taiwan dollar surged to 27.160 against the U.S. currency from 27.298 on Friday.
But the rallies petered out, leaving the stock index up just 0.02 percent at the close and the Taiwan dollar well off its highs at 27.258 per dollar.
Although analysts saw a move toward replacing acrimony with accommodation, they cautioned that neither China nor Taiwan have compromised on any of the key issues which caused relations to sour eight months ago.
The U.S. carriers Nimitz and Independence, escorted by battle groups, are still thought to be in seas around Taiwan and U.S.- China relations have yet to show signs of a recovery.
Taiwan's defense ministry said it was also watching closely to see if China would begin new war games either in the Taiwan Strait or at an inland location on the mainland.
Taiwan National Security Council director Yin Tsong-wen said that he thought a new exercises would take place, this time focusing on training suitable for operations in Taiwanese inland areas.
"Their training will focus on Taiwan's special inland situation. They will have little impact on international waters and Taiwan," Yin told the state-run Central News Agency.
Analysts said that Beijing must have realized that its intimidatory exercises have backfired after the man it has vilified as a dictator, a "schemer" and a "double dealer" won such a large popular endorsement.
But on Sunday, Premier Lien Chan called for step-by-step negotiations to lead to an eventual leaders' summit at which a peace agreement between the two sides would be signed.
China also said that the door to talks is open. But, in the small print, trouble is still lurking.
Beijing insisted in remarks on Sunday that Lee should accept he is just a local leader of a part of China. Taipei, however, wants any summit to take place on the basis of equality.
Foreign business leaders in Taiwan yesterday expressed confidence in the island's investment climate after its historic presidential election, but urged Taipei to find a peaceful solution to its tensions with China.
"Most investors are cautiously optimistic that President Lee (Teng-hui) has a clear mandate and will make initiatives toward bettering relations with China," said Christian Murck, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei (ACCT).
"But if tensions continue and people start to believe that in medium and long terms military conflicts are possible, then foreign investments would be affected," Murck said.