Taiwan leader's secret message to China may signal a thaw

TAIPEI, Taiwan — A decision by President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan to send a secret message to China's leaders, the most direct contact between the two sides since his election five years ago, is awakening new hopes here of a possible thaw in relations across the Formosa Strait.

Chen said Sunday morning that he had spoken by phone on Saturday night with James Soong, the chairman of the small People First Party, and asked him to convey a message to Beijing. Soong is scheduled to fly to the mainland on Thursday for a weeklong trip and will be in Beijing from May 10 to May 12.

Chen said the message was based on a 10-point consensus he had reached on Feb. 24 with Soong on cross-straits relations and other issues, the state-owned Central News Agency said.

Chen has been put on the defensive by the surprising popularity here of a meeting on Friday in Beijing between President Hu Jintao of China and Lien Chan, the chairman of the opposition Nationalist Party.

The Nationalists ran Taiwan from the end of China's civil war in 1949 until 2000, when Chen defeated Lien in presidential elections; Chen beat him again in a rematch last spring.

The details of Chen's message are being kept so secret that even the Taiwan Cabinet official in charge of relations with mainland China, Joseph Wu, the chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council, has not been told.

Hsieh Kung-ping, the spokesman of the People First Party, confirmed that Soong had spoken with the president but also declined to provide details. Hsieh did not answer subsequent calls to his cell phone.

Chen's overture to China has attracted considerable attention and speculation because he and his governing Democratic Progressive Party have risen to power by repeatedly confronting China.

Chen's message will probably mix some elements that might interest China, like strengthened economic ties and perhaps efforts to reduce the possibility of a misunderstanding between the two sides' military forces, with other suggestions that Beijing will dismiss as unacceptable, like some sort of recognition of the government here, said Philip Yang, the director of the Taiwan Security Research Center at National Taiwan University.