Beijing said yesterday it is ready to authorize conditional negotiations with Taipei if its top official on cross-Straits affairs is allowed to visit the island.

Chen Yunlin (R), director of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, talks with Tseng Yung-Chuan, head of Taiwan's Kuomintang group in Beijing February 22, 2006. [Reuters]

The move is apparently meant to pave the way for the planned visit by Chen Yunlin, director of the Taiwan Work Office of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee.

Chen has been invited by Taiwan's opposition Kuomintang (KMT) to head a 66-member delegation for a cross-Straits agriculture forum in Taipei on October 22 and 23.

"If Taiwan authorities explicitly state their approval of the visit of Chen's delegation...we together with the KMT are willing to hold negotiations with the designated unit of Taiwan under an appropriate name," said a statement from the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS).

The ARATS, Beijing's semi-official body for talks with Taipei, said negotiations may cover issues such as the mainland delegation's entry to Taiwan, security and convenience measures.

It was responding to an August 21 letter from its Taiwan counterpart, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), which asked for talks on Chen's planned trip to the island.

The SEF said it proposed talks with the ARATS on Chen's visit because the issue involves "the exchange and mutual visit of high-level government officials across the Straits."

If approved, Chen would be the highest-ranking mainland official to visit the island since 1949.

The ARATS, however, hinted its refusal to hold direct talks with the SEF by emphasizing that Chen's visit to Taiwan is only part of the inter-party exchange between the CPC and KMT.

It added that Chen's visit has nothing to do with the negotiations between the ARATS and SEF as well as that between governments of both sides.

(China Daily 08/29/2006 page2)