Talks between Taiwan and China over speedboat incident postponed until Tuesday

Taipei, July 28 (CNA) Officials from Taiwan and China will meet on Tuesday to discuss the speedboat incident on Kinmen after the meeting originally scheduled for July 24 was postponed due to Typhoon Gaemi, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Sunday.

Both sides have agreed to hold the rescheduled meeting at the Golden Lake Hotel in remote Kinmen county, the original venue, and will discuss outstanding issues related to the incident that left two Chinese nationals dead on Feb. 14, the MAC said in a statement.

Representatives of the families of the two deceased sailors would arrive in Kinmen on Monday to ensure smooth and thorough talks, the statement added.

In addition, “personnel from both sides will inspect the meeting venue on Monday and discuss and confirm the schedule of activities for the next day (Tuesday),” the MAC said, without mentioning the names or positions of the officials who will attend the meeting.

Since negotiations over the incident were suspended in March, the Ocean Affairs Council and the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) have continued to communicate with Chinese authorities through certain channels, the statement said.

A meeting between the two sides was originally scheduled for July 24, but the impact of Typhoon Gaemi led to the suspension of ferry services across the strait, preventing the families of the two deceased Chinese sailors and the delegation of Chinese officials from reaching Kinmen, the MAC said in an earlier statement.

Sunday’s MAC statement came after local newspaper Liberty Times reported earlier the same day that the meeting had been postponed and a mutual agreement would be signed.

The Chinese side will be represented by a director-level representative of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS), China’s semi-official body that handles technical and business affairs with Taiwan.

On the Taiwanese side, representatives from the MAC, the CGA and the ARATS counterpart, the Straits Exchange Foundation, will be present, according to the report.

The report also quoted a source familiar with the matter as saying that if all goes smoothly, the bodies of the two deceased Chinese sailors and the speedboat involved in the incident would be returned to China on the same day as the meeting.

The families of the two deceased would also receive consolation payments, the report said.

The Kinmen speedboat incident occurred on February 14 when Taiwan’s coast guard pursued a Chinese speedboat that had entered prohibited waters off the coast of Kinmen.

According to the coast guard, the unnamed and unregistered Chinese boat with four people on board refused a request to board and inspect it and later fled. A chase then began that ended when the vessel made a sudden turn.

The speedboat collided with a CGA patrol vessel and capsized in waters near Kinmen during the pursuit, resulting in the deaths of two Chinese crew members.

The other two Chinese citizens who survived the incident returned to China on February 20, while the bodies of the deceased crew members and the speedboat remained in Kinmen for further examination.

The incident heightened tensions around Kinmen, which lies less than ten kilometers off the coast of the Chinese city of Xiamen.

Representatives of both sides held several rounds of talks in February and March but were unable to reach agreement on issues related to the case, including compensation for the families of the dead.

The Chinese representative in the previous rounds of negotiations, deputy director of the Quanzhou Municipal Taiwan Affairs Office Li Zhaohui (李朝暉), accused the Taiwanese authorities of failing to provide an acceptable explanation for what happened and of putting obstacles in the way of the demands of the families of the deceased.

However, the CGA said in a statement that the Chinese side’s demands were inconsistent with Taiwan’s legal system, making it impossible for both sides to reach consensus.