Mainland, Taiwan servicemen to meet

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-03-31 07:19

Military officials from the mainland and Taiwan will have a face-to-face encounter 60 years after the civil war ended - for talking and sharing ideas.

A mainland military official who preferred anonymity told China Daily Monday that military officials from the mainland and Taiwan would meet during a security forum in Hawaii in August.

This will be the first military exchange between servicemen across the Straits since 1949, in a move experts said would pave the path for building military trust as political ties improve.

Another military source in Beijing said yesterday that some cross-Straits military exchanges may take place before August, but declined to reveal more details.

Servicemen across the Straits will attend the Transnational Security Cooperation (SEC), a military exchange forum in Hawaii organized by the US Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies under the US Pacific Command.

The forum brings together military officials from Asia-Pacific countries and regions annually to attend seminars, study regional security issues, enhance mutual trust and build channels of communication.

The mainland sent officers to the SEC in 2000, but didn't attend the forum when Taiwan was invited in 2002. This was a time when cross-Straits tensions intensified after former Taiwan leader Chen Shui-bian urged "Taiwan independence".

"Though the August exchange will not be formal cross-Straits talks, it will be a landmark," said Peng Guangqian, a Beijing-based military scholar.

Wu Nengyuan, director of the Fujian-based Institute of Taiwan Studies, said the move signals that both sides are "ready to start exchanges in military field", considered the most sensitive part in cross-Straits relations.

Cross-Straits ties warmed since Ma Ying-jeou became Taiwan "president" in May 2008. Taiwan announced trimming its forces by about a fifth by 2014 and a shift towards a more defensive posture in its Quadrennial Defense Review this month.

Yesterday it announced the removal of anti-ship landing barricades in Quemoy, about 160 km from the mainland - believed to have strategic and military value for Taiwan.

The barricades, built as spikes mounted at an angle on cement bases to spear warships headed towards the shore after the civil war, will be removed before Aug 1, to let people take part in a swimming contest from the mainland's Xiamen city to Quemoy.

Peng Peiyun, president of Red Cross Society of China, arrived in Taipei on Sunday on a week-long visit, heading a delegation of the charity organization's senior officials.

She is the third high-level mainland official visiting Taiwan this year, after Huang Menfu, vice-chairman of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and Xu Jialu, former vice-chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee.