Transcript of Interview

In other words, our demands are rather moderate and what we have been saying is this is not only a political issue, it's also a human rights issue. I think the health of 23 million people should not be ignored. And we are very happy to see that some countries, including the United States, went so far as to put their support on the Web site of the United Nations, this was also unprecedented. We have received so many visitors from the United States and Japan and the European Union -- they all support our participation.

As I said, we just want to attend the meeting, we're not asking for anything more, we hope we could make it next May.

Q: For government to government talks next year, what are the obstacles? What kind of breakthroughs might we see in the near future?

For regular or what we call institutionalized negotiations, that will cover a different set of issues. For instance, we want to conclude a memorandum of understanding of financial services. Actually, preliminary talks have already been held, and there's a relatively high degree of consensus, so we expect to see the kind of agreement being put into the third Jiang-Chen talks next year.

There's also an urgent need to coordinate the police department[s] of [the] two sides to jointly combat cross-strait crimes, particularly telephone or Web fraud, another thing that has been quite rampant across the Taiwan Strait.

Another thing we want to talk about is the protection of investment across the Taiwan Strait and also the avoidance of double taxation and dispute settlements.

Sometimes you can't really cover so many questions at the same time, so we will let the different departments of the governments deal with their counterparts on the issues they consider are urgent, and when their preliminary consultations have led to some concrete consensus, then we will wrap them up into a package to be finalized in the Jiang-Chen talks next year. That's how we call institutionalized negotiations, but other political issues are more sensitive and probably have to be treated differently. But still, issues like the [World Health Assembly] will soon become a subject of negotiation, in the next couple of months.

Q: What about Taiwan's proposed status in the WHO?

A: WHA first.

Q: Could Taiwan policy change under President Obama and what have you heard?

A: Judging from the three documents we have so far seen from the Obama camp, first when I was elected on March 22, I got a letter from him. It was a well-written letter, because it not only praised our democracy but also vowed to restore mutual trust between the two sides. I think candidate Obama already put the finger on this very important question. Rebuilding mutual trust is a very critical job of mine in relation to the United States, because mutual trust was lost in the last eight years.

And another letter came when I was inaugurated, congratulating me, and then we've seen the democratic platform for the president. Again, they attach a lot of importance to Taiwan's road. So I don't see any possibility of any major change in policy. As you know, as you watch the campaign process, the issue of Taiwan is almost unseen in the debate, and we were assured by many of our friends from the United States that no news is good news.