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Taiwan's Ma to confirm warming China ties
2008-08-03
TAIPEI (AFP) - Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou plans to bolster the island's ties with China later this month to coincide with the 50th anniversary of a battle between the cross-Strait rivals, an aide said Sunday. Ma will fly to Kinmen, a Taiwan-controlled fortified island group just miles off China's southeastern Xiamen city, on August 23, and deliver a speech "of historic significance," the United Daily News said. He is expected to extend an olive branch to Beijing during his speech on "rapprochement and peace," it said. Ma's spokesman Wang Yu-chi confirmed the report. "We're working on the plan... the president will make such remarks in Kinmen," he said, declining to provide details. Despite commencement of civil exchanges since 1987, Taiwan and China are still technically at war and Kinmen is a constant reminder of the hostility. The People's Liberation Army of Mao Zedong fired more than 450,000 shells on Kinmen island and several other smaller islets in a 44-day artillery bombardment beginning on August 23, 1958. Ma, of the China-friendly Kuomintang party, was elected in a landslide in March and has pledged to improve ties with China. The two sides launched regular direct flights for the first time in nearly six decades last month. His government has also allowed more Chinese tourists to visit the island and relaxed controls on China-bound investments, issues which had been shunned by the former government of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party.
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