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Taipei ready to discuss air charters with Beijing
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-11-04 15:33
TAIPEI - Taiwan said on Friday it was ready to talk to the mainland about
allowing direct charter flights ahead of the peak Lunar New Year travel season
in early 2006, a day after an invitation by Beijing.
Taiwan's
vice-chairman of the "Mainland Affairs Council" in charge of mainland
affairs, David Huang explains Taipei's position on new charter flights
with the mainland November 4, 2005, in Taipei.
[AP] | But the island's top mainland policy-making body, the "Mainland Affairs
Council," said it would prefer to discuss opening of direct cargo and passenger
charters on a regular basis as well.
Taiwan has banned direct air links with the mainland since 1949, when the
Nationalists lost the civil war and fled to the island.
But Taipei and Beijing exchanged landmark non-stop charter flights for the
first time in over five decades during the Lunar New Year Festival in January
and February this year after two sides met in Macau to iron out details.
"If the 2006 Lunar New Year charter flights are based on the same model of
the 2005 charters," the council's vice chairman David Huang told a news
conference.
"The goodwill we hope from them is to show some flexibility in cargo and
passenger charters so we can make some progress on that front as soon as
possible," Huang said.
The Lunar New Year, the biggest holiday in the Chinese speaking world, falls
on January 26 next year.
Despite often testy ties, Taiwan companies are estimated to have invested
over US$100 billion in the mainland since the 1980s.
An estimated 1 million of Taiwanese, or 5 percent of its population, work or
live in the mainland and must normally transit through places such as Hong Kong
when traveling between the two sides, adding at least four hours to their
journeys.
Direct air links would be the latest in a series of developments, from visits
to the mainland by Taiwan opposition politicians to Beijing's promises to give
Taipei two endangered pandas, that have thawed relations between the two sides
this year.
Top official in charge of tourism from the mainland was currently in the
island for a 10-day visit, fuelling hopes the trip could open the floodgates for
mainland tourists to the island.
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