By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will hold a meeting today to discuss the party’s position and strategy on a proposed cross-strait investment protection and promotion agreement, which could be finalized in an eighth round of cross-strait negotiations on Thursday, a DPP spokesperson said yesterday.
DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) will convene a joint meeting of party officials and legislators, a traditional practice for the party to coordinate opinions of its headquarters and the legislative caucus, spokesperson Wang Ming-shen (王閔生) said yesterday.
Negotiations between Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) and Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) will take place on Thursday and Friday in Taipei to finalize the signature of the cross-strait investment protection and promotion agreement, which both sides failed to sign during the previous round.
The meeting has been called to make sure the party headquarters and its legislative caucus maintain a unified position on the issue, which was not the case in past weeks when both sides were at odds over the endgame strategy of the US beef controversy, Wang said.
Party officials will brief participants on various aspects of the agreement, in particular on personal safety protection and international arbitrations — the main areas in previous talks that both sides had failed to agree upon, he said.
The DPP has no plan to organize a mass protest on the negotiations, Wang said, despite an announcement by the Taiwan Solidarity Union that it would launch a demonstration to “shadow” Chinese officials during the talks.
If the caucus proposed such plans, he said, the proposal would be discussed in today’s joint meeting.