CHINA: Just days before he heads to Washington for his first state visit there, Chinese president Hu Jintao has called for fresh talks with Taiwan to ensure stability in the region, but framed his call for dialogue in a way which meant Taipei was unlikely to agree, writes Clifford Coonan in Beijing
President Hu told Lien Chan, former chairman of the Kuomintang, Taiwan's nationalist opposition, that talks between the mainland and the island that China considers a renegade province must "resume on an equal footing as soon as possible".
"Peace and development should become the main issue on the development of cross-strait ties and should be the goal that compatriots on both sides of the strait should struggle for," Mr Hu said.
The condition for talks, however, was that Taiwan president Chen Shui-bian, who wants to keep self-rule on the island, should accept the "One China Principle" which holds that both the mainland and Taiwan are part of one China.
As expected, Taiwan's policy-making Mainland Affairs Council dismissed Beijing's overtures, saying Mr Hu lacked sincerity and that talks should proceed without "One China" as a condition for talks.
"While communist China talks about peaceful development across the strait, it refuses dialogue and consultation, continues its military deployment against Taiwan and threatens peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait," the council said in a statement.
President Hu said China would fulfil its promises to Taiwan compatriots and would not change its course just because of "momentary fluctuations or a small group of people interfering in or sabotaging" links across the straits.
Mr Lien, whose KMT were voted out of power by President Chen's pro-independence DPP, was leading a 170-member delegation of business leaders and party officials to attend a two-day economic and trade forum in Beijing; the latest in a series of visits by KMT officials.
The forum ended with a handful of economic enticements aimed at courting Taiwanese public opinion, including deals on aviation, agriculture and finance.
Pitting the independence-minded president against the KMT leader is very much in the "divide and conquer" mould of political manoeuvring, which has worked very well for the communists before.
The nationalists ruled China from the end of the Qing dynasty in 1911. They joined forces with the communists to fight the Japanese but soon after the end of the war, civil war erupted and Chiang Kai-shek's armies lost to those of the wily Chairman Mao Zedong. No armistice or peace agreement was ever signed.
Beijing has said it will invade Taiwan if it formally declares independence, and has hundreds of missiles pointing across the Strait of Taiwan.
Fence-mending talks between Beijing and Taipei have been frozen since 1999. In late February, President Chen disbanded a symbolic body concerned with eventual unification with China, and Beijing condemned that move.