China and Taiwan hold historic talks

China and Taiwan hold historic talks
British lawmakers back car smoking ban
Iran test-fires long-range missile — Minister
Thai government admits lack of power to renew troubled rice scheme
North, South Korea to hold rare high-level talks
New Zealand PM wants Japan apology in whaling row

Posted: 11 Feb 2014 05:52 PM PST

NANJING, China: China and Taiwan yesterday held their first government-to-government talks since they split 65 years ago after a brutal civil war – a symbolic yet historic move between the former bitter rivals.

Taipei's Wang Yu-chi, who oversees the island's China policy, met his Beijing counterpart Zhang Zhijun in Nanjing on the first day of a four-day trip.

With sensitivities crucial, the room was neutrally decorated with no flags visible and nameplates on the table devoid of titles or affiliations.

Before leaving, Wang told reporters: "The visit does not come easy, it is the result of interactions between the two sides for many years."

Nanjing, in eastern China, was the country's capital when it was ruled by Wang's Kuomintang, or Nationalist, party in the first half of the 20th century.

When they lost China's civil war – which cost millions of lives – to Mao Zedong's Communists in 1949, two million supporters of the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan, officially known as the Republic of China.

The island and the mainland have been governed separately ever since, both claiming to be the true government of China and only re-establishing contact in the 1990s through quasi-official organisations.

Yesterday's meeting is the fruit of years of efforts to improve relations.

But Beijing's Communist authorities still aim to reunite all of China under their rule, and view Taiwan as a rebel region awaiting reunification with the mainland – by force if necessary.

Over the decades Taipei has become increasingly isolated diplomatically, losing the Chinese seat at the UN in 1971 and seeing the number of countries recognising it steadily whittled away. But it is supplied militarily by the United States and has enjoyed a long economic boom.

No official agenda has been released for the talks – widely seen as a symbolic, confidence-building exercise. Wang said he would not sign any agreements but added: "The main purpose of the visit is to help facilitate mutual understanding."

Taiwan is likely to focus on reaping practical outcomes from the discussions, such as securing economic benefits or security assurances, while China has one eye on long-term integration of the island, analysts say.

The political thaw comes after the two sides made cautious steps towards economic reconciliation in recent years.

As the heirs of a pan-Chinese government, Taiwan's ruling Kuomintang party accepts the "One China" principle and is opposed to seeking independence for the island.

Since it returned to power on the island in elections in 2008, President Ma Ying-jeou has overseen a marked softening in Taiwan's tone towards its giant neighbour, restoring direct flights and other measures.

In June 2010 Taiwan and China signed the landmark Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, a pact widely characterised as the boldest step yet towards reconciliation.

Yet despite the much-touted detente, Taipei and Beijing have still shunned all official contact and negotiations have been carried out through proxies.

While these bodies – the quasi-official Straits Exchange Foundation representing Taiwan and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits for China – have achieved economic progress, they lack the power to broach deeper-held differences.

Analysts say only government-level officials can address the lingering sovereignty dispute that sees each side claiming to be the sole legitimate government of China.

Yesterday's meeting will be watched closely to see whether it can pave the way for talks between Ma and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping – although chances of that happening any time soon are slim.

"The current interaction across the Taiwan Strait is quite positive," said Jia Qingguo, a professor of international studies at Peking University. — AFP

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British lawmakers back car smoking ban

Posted: 11 Feb 2014 05:48 PM PST

LONDON: British members of parliament voted overwhelmingly on Monday in support of a ban on smoking in cars carrying children.

Lawmakers in the House of Commons, the lower house of parliament, voted in favour of a ban by 376 to 107.

It is now up to Prime Minister David Cameron's government to decide whether to actually bring a ban into effect.

Opponents of the measure had argued that legislation on the issue was not needed, and infringed people's freedoms.

Australia, Canada, South Africa and the United States already ban smoking in cars in which children are passengers.

Lawmakers were voting on an amendment to a bill, brought by the opposition Labour party, which gives the government the power to make it a criminal offence for drivers to fail to prevent smoking in their cars, although it does not mean the government necessarily has to.

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government gave lawmakers a free vote, meaning that they could decide on principle instead of being forced to toe the party line. — AFP

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Iran test-fires long-range missile — Minister

Posted: 11 Feb 2014 05:45 PM PST

ANKARA: Iran's military has successfully test-fired two new domestically made missiles, the defence minister said on Monday according to state television, ahead of talks with world powers to try to reach an agreement on curbing Tehran's nuclear programme.

Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan said one of them was a long-range ballistic missile with radar-evading capabilities.

"The new generation of long-range ground-to-ground ballistic missile with a fragmentation warhead and the laser-guided air-to-surface and surface-to-surface missile dubbed Bina (Insightful) have been successfully test-fired," state television quoted him as saying.

"The Bina missile is capable of striking important targets such as bridges, tanks and enemy command centres with great precision."

Iran already has long-range surface-to-surface Shahab missiles with a range of about 2,000 km (1,250 miles) that are capable of reaching Israel and U.S. military bases in the Middle East. However, analysts have challenged some of Iran's military assertions, saying it often exaggerates its capabilities.

President Hassan Rouhani issued a congratulatory message saying: "Iran's children successfully test-fired a new generation of missiles," the television reported.

The decision to carry out the test may be a sign of Iran's political infighting. Rouhani was criticised by a group of hardline lawmakers on Sunday for blocking a planned missile exercise. However, it was not immediately clear whether the test on Monday was the same one. — Reuters

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Thai government admits lack of power to renew troubled rice scheme

Posted: 11 Feb 2014 05:44 PM PST

BANGKOK: Thailand's caretaker government said yesterday it did not have the power to renew a rice subsidy scheme when it expires at the end of the month, risking further alienating farmers angry over late payments for their current crop.

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, assailed since November by a largely urban, middle class protest movement bent on driving her from office, is now facing unrest among her Puea Thai Party's natural supporters in the countryside, where many farmers have gone unpaid for their rice for months.

Yingluck has led a caretaker administration since December, when she dissolved parliament and called a snap election in an attempt to end the anti-government street protests. As a result, the government's spending and borrowing powers are heavily curtailed.

"We are just a caretaker government, which has no power to extend any policy. The rice-buying scheme will end automatically on Feb 28," Varathep Rattanakorn, a minister in the prime minister's office, told Reuters.

The rice programme was one of the populist policies associated with Yingluck's brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, a former prime minister central to a stubborn conflict that has divided Thais since he was toppled by the military in 2006.

The pledge to pay farmers a price way above world rice benchmarks helped sweep Yingluck to power in 2011, but the scheme has become mired in allegations of corruption and growing losses that are making it increasingly hard to fund.

In recent weeks, big banks have refused to extend bridging loans to help fund the programme, unconvinced the government has the authority to seek them, while China has cancelled a government-to-government rice deal due to a corruption probe.

More than 1,000 farmers protested outside the government's temporary base in northern Bangkok on Monday and said they would continue their campaign after a meeting between their representatives and ministers broke up without agreement.

Finance Minister Kittirat Na Ranong said yesterday the farmers would ultimately get paid and appealed for more time to arrange bank financing.

"The government believes it could complete the rice loan in a few days' time," he told reporters ahead of a cabinet meeting.

"We need to reassure financial institutions that the rice loan will not breach the law." — Reuters

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North, South Korea to hold rare high-level talks

Posted: 11 Feb 2014 05:42 PM PST

SEOUL: North and South Korea will hold rare high-level government talks today, the South's Unification Ministry announced, ahead of a planned reunion of family members divided by the Korean War.

The meeting involving senior officials from the South's Defence Ministry, Unification Ministry and Presidential Office will take place at the border truce village of Panmunjom, unification ministry spokesman Kim Eui-Do told reporters.

Although no agenda has been set, the talks will involve "discussions on major inter-Korean issues" including the upcoming family reunion, Kim said.

In the past, Seoul has insisted that substantive talks can only take place after Pyongyang makes a tangible commitment to abandoning its nuclear weapons programme.

The South Korean delegation will be led by Kim Kyou-Hyun, the first deputy director of national security in President Park Geun-Hye's administration.

North Korean state media did not immediately report the planned meeting. But the unification ministry said Pyongyang had asked for the meeting to discuss overall inter-Korean ties.

The two Koreas agreed last week to hold a reunion for several hundred divided family relatives from Feb 20-25 at the North's Kumgang mountain resort.

But there have been fears the North might cancel the event in protest at South Korea and the United States pushing ahead with annual joint military exercises which begin on Feb 24.

Pyongyang views the exercises as rehearsals for invasion and has repeatedly called on Seoul to call them off, warning at one point of an 'unimaginable holocaust' if they went ahead.

President Park has personally urged the North to honour the reunion agreement for the sake of the family members, many of whom are in advanced old age and frail health. — AFP

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New Zealand PM wants Japan apology in whaling row

Posted: 11 Feb 2014 05:39 PM PST

WELLINGTON: New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said Yesterday he wants Japan to apologise over a whaling ship entering Wellington's exclusive economic zone (EEZ), despite warnings for it to keep out.

The New Zealand foreign ministry has already hauled in the Japanese ambassador Yasuaki Nogawa for a dressing down over the incident last Friday, which it labelled "unhelpful, disrespectful and short-sighted".

Key said he supported Japan going one step further and issuing an apology over the incursion, which took place when the whaling ship Shonan Maru 2 entered the EEZ as it was chasing the Sea Shepherd protest vessel Steve Irwin.

"That would be good," he told reporters when questioned about whether Japan needed to say sorry.

"We had earlier on made it quite clear our view about the Japanese ship coming into New Zealand's economic zone."

"We'll see what happens from here, but whether there's an apology — we'll wait and see."

The foreign ministry said the ship did not enter New Zealand's territorial waters, which extend 12 nautical miles from the coast, but did breach its EEZ, which covers a region 12 to 200 nautical miles offshore.

While the vessel was legally entitled to sail in the EEZ, the ministry said it had been made clear to Japanese officials before it entered the waters Friday that it was not welcome. — AFP

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