TAIPEI should aim to preserve stable relations with China while Beijing deals with the succession to patriarch Deng Xiaoping, Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui said yesterday.
Mr Lee, who is also Kuomintang chairman, made the statement at the weekly meeting of the KMT's central standing committee after hearing an analysis of the January 30 speech on Taiwan policy by Chinese President Jiang Zemin.
KMT spokesman Dr Hansen Chien said Mr Lee urged party leaders to pay close attention to probable conflicts in Beijing over the succession issue as the patriarch's health grows worse.
Mr Lee added that Taipei should take care 'not to touch off unnecessary, unpleasant incidents' in order to maintain the stability of cross-strait relations.
The report submitted by Huang Yao-yu, director-general of the KMT's department of mainland operations, said that Mr Jiang's suggestion of a cross-strait summit meeting 'was premature'.
The KMT analysis said that the timing of Mr Jiang's speech was related to the probable instability of his leadership in the wake of Mr Deng's death and pressures generated by the mainland's overheated economy and rising social disorder.
The report added that Beijing leaders could have mistaken 'the limited, short-term and superficial negative phenomena in the process of democratic reform' in Taiwan as being a sign of imminent major change in the island's political situation and as an opportunity to take political advantage.
