SEF, ARATS officials meet ahead of Dec.

Kao Koong-lian, vice chairman of the Taipei- based Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), and Zheng Lizhong, vice president of the Beijing-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, (ARATS), examined the content of the four agreements to be signed at a fourth round of SEF-ARATS talks scheduled to take place in Taichung, central Taiwan, in December, SEF spokesman Ma Shao-chang said.

The four agreements to be signed will cover cooperation on fishing crew members, agricultural quarantine inspection, industrial product standards, inspection and certification, and the avoidance of double taxation.

Ma said, however, that Kao and Zheng did not enter into “substantial discussions” on the proposed cross-strait economic cooperation and framework agreement (ECFA), although they agreed to make the ECFA a “dialogue issue” for the December negotiations between SEF Chairman Chiang Pin-kung and ARATS President Chen Yunlin.

Chiang confirmed at a Taipei forum late in the day that the ECFA issue will not be on the official agenda of his coming talks with Chen.

But he said it is possible that he and Chen would discuss the issue informally, in preparation for formal negotiations on the trade deal at their fifth round of talks in the first quarter of next year.

The highly controversial proposed trade deal was back in the news recently after China asked to postpone a scheduled dialogue in Beijing on the issue.

The meeting, scheduled to take place between Huang Chih-peng, director general of the Bureau of Foreign Trade under the Ministry of Economic Affairs, and Tang Wei, director of the Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao Department under China's Ministry of Commerce, on Nov. 3-4, was postponed at Beijing's request, which cited “time constraints in preparing for the dialogue.”

Mainland Affairs Council Vice Chairman Kao Charng said the meeting had been postponed rather than canceled, and that both Taipei and Beijing still planned to move forward on the issue.

In Beijing, Yang Yi, the spokesman of the Taiwan Affairs Office under China's State Council, told Taiwanese reporters that dialogue on the ECFA issue would be resumed at a later time, without elaborating.

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