China premier to offer to resume talks with Taiwan

BEIJING, Mar 4 (Reuters) Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao will offer tomorrow to conditionally resume talks with Taiwan, but the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own is likely to reject the overture.

''We will continue under the basis of the 'one China'' principle ... to seek early resumption of cross-Strait dialogue and negotiations,'' Wen will tell the opening of the annual session of parliament tomorrow.

''(We) will unite the broad masses of Taiwan compatriots to resolutely oppose Taiwan's de jure independence and any form of splittist activities,'' according to excerpts of Wen's speech was seen by Reuters.

Talks between Beijing and Taipei, diplomatic and military rivals since their split in 1949 amid civil war, have been frozen since 1999 when then-Taiwan president Lee Teng-hui angered China by redefining bilateral relations as ''special state to state''.

Beijing has considered Taiwan a province and part of ''one China'' along with the mainland since Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist troops lost the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong's Communists in 1949 and fled to the island where the Nationalists ruled for the next five decades.

Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian's Democratic Progressive Party, which won the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, insists the island is already a sovereign state.

But Taiwan, which still styles itself as the Republic of China, is diplomatically isolated. It is not a member of the United Nations and is recognised by only 24 countries in the world. The rest maintain diplomatic relations with Beijing.

The DPP has been studying constitutional ways of changing the island's formal name, altering the national flag and redefining its territory to exclude the mainland.

Taiwan's post office and state-owned petroleum company have dropped China from their names to underscore the island's independence.

According to the excerpts, Wen will say that China is committed to peace with Taiwan and joint development and will urge the island to lift a decades-old ban on direct air and shipping links.

Flights are currently routed through Hong Kong or a third territory due to Taiwan's security concerns.

REUTERS SP RAI2152