Taiwan Team Arrives in Beijing for Talks

Both Sides Hope Meeting on Air Travel Accord Will Spur Broader Negotiations

BEIJING, June 12 -- Seeking to foster a new era of cooperation, Taiwanese and Chinese negotiators opened talks Thursday to put the finishing touches on an accord for regular charter flights to Taiwan and sharply expanded Chinese tourism on the self-ruled island.

The talks, expected to conclude Friday, were described as the first step in what officials on both sides hope will grow into broad economic, political and security negotiations aimed at an agreement to set aside 59 years of hostility, lower military tensions and do more business in one of Asia's most volatile flash points.

"You are writing history," Taiwan's president, Ma Ying-jeou, told his envoys before they departed.

Ma, a Nationalist Party veteran who took office May 20, has ended the campaign to boost Taiwanese self-identity and promote national independence that was the hallmark of Chen Shui-bian's combative eight years in office. He has focused instead on practical steps toward better relations with the mainland.

This stand has meshed smoothly with the approach of Hu Jintao, China's Communist Party leader and president, who has proclaimed eagerness for improving ties despite the party's long-standing claim that Taiwan must return to rule by Beijing. In a meeting May 29 with the visiting Nationalist Party chairman, Wu Poh-hsiung, Hu held out the prospect of new economic, political and security agreements in the near future, including some kind of Taiwanese participation in the World Health Organization.

The United States has pledged to aid in Taiwan's defense, but has long delayed a request from Taipei for advanced warplanes as it seeks to maintain friendly relations with China as well, particularly as the Beijing Olympics approach and a lowering of tensions in the Taiwan Strait seems possible.

Despite the expressions of goodwill, more than half a century of enmity and war footing mean progress could be slow, analysts cautioned. "The talks have symbolic meaning and political implications," said George Tsai, a political scientist at Taipei's Chinese Culture University. "But I would suggest that the people here and the government should not expect too much and not harbor illusions."

Reflecting China's refusal to recognize the Taiwanese government, the negotiations here are being conducted by semiofficial organizations. But both negotiating teams included government officials using different titles.

The talks were the first formal sessions between China and Taiwan since 1999, when contacts were broken off over a declaration by Li Teng-hui, then Taiwan's president, that the two governments should have special state-to-state relations.

Ma, in a recent interview, said most of the charter flight arrangements had been worked out in months of contacts between the Nationalist and Communist parties, whose leaders in effect worked around President Chen and his party. Based on those talks, Taiwanese officials predicted the negotiators will set up direct weekend charter flights as a first step, probably 18 round-trip flights for Chinese airlines and 18 for Taiwanese carriers.

Ma had expressed hope that as many as 3,000 Chinese tourists a day could visit the island eventually. Limiting the flights to 36 a week indicated the initial total would fall far short of that goal. Reports in Beijing said Chinese authorities wanted to restrict the visits to upper-income tourists in the first stage, with the possibility of expanding later. About 80,000 Chinese visited Taiwan in 2007, according to official statistics.

Chiang Pin-kung, head of the Straits Exchange Foundation, the Taiwanese negotiating group, reporters in Taipei that the Beijing meetings were only the beginning. Further discussions, he said, will center on direct cargo flights, direct sea travel, scheduled flights and, in a reference to the effort to participate in the WTO, "the issue of Taiwan's diplomatic space."

Ma, in the interview, said he also wanted the two semiofficial organizations to be a forum for future negotiations on increased economic cooperation, such as entry by Taiwanese banks into the Chinese financial market and official convertibility of the two currencies. Eventually, he added, he wants to move into political and security talks, establishing a framework for future relations and lowering the number of Chinese missiles aimed at Taiwan.

Special correspondent Jane Rickards in Taipei contributed to this report.