China's State Council Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Yang Yi hosts a regular press conference on Wednesday, October 29, 2008, giving details for the upcoming trip of Chen Yunlin, Chairman of the mainland's Association for Relations across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS), to Taiwan from November 3 to 7. [Photo: chinataiwan.org]

A Chinese mainland official said Wednesday that the mainland hopes its chief negotiator's upcoming visit to Taiwan will be safe and smooth.

The mainland's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) chairman Chen Yunlin will head a delegation to Taiwan from Nov. 3 to 7.

Leaders of the ARATS and Taiwan's Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) will meet to discuss cross-Strait shipping, air transport, postal services, food safety and financial cooperation.

"Arrangements for the upcoming meeting should follow routines so that they are acceptable and convenient to both sides," State Council Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Yang Yi said.

The two organizations had already agreed on the locations and titles for meetings, he said.

Yang said the mainland believes that cross-strait negotiation should tackle economic problems first.

"As for the issues left over from the past and political issues, we believe the two sides should work together to create conditions and gradually solve them through negotiation," he said.

Yang did not disclose whether Chen would accompany the two pandas that mainland had promised to donate to Taiwan.

"Departments concerned are making active preparations and we hope Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan can meet Taiwan compatriots soon," he said.

The 4-year-old pandas, one of China's most endangered animal species, are at a panda breeding base in Ya'an, western Sichuan Province.

They were transferred to the base on June 18 from the Wolong Nature Reserve, also in Sichuan, after it was seriously damaged in the May 12 earthquake.

The mainland announced in May 2005 it would donate two giant pandas to Taiwan to demonstrate goodwill. But their departure has been delayed for more than three years.

Chen's Taiwan visit will be the second meeting between the ARATS and the SEF in the last 10 years. The first, attended by SEF chairman Chiang Pin-kung, was held in Beijing in June.

Chen's trip to Taiwan was preceded by an incident in which ARATS deputy chief Zhang Mingqing was jostled by a crowd in Taiwan.

Zhang, who was visiting at the invitation of the Taiwan National University of the Arts as dean of journalism at Xiamen University, was shoved to the ground by a mob allegedly incited by Wang Ting-yu, a local lawmaker from Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

The ARATS has condemned the violence and asked the Taiwan authority to prevent such incidents in future.

Yang said security measures for Chen's stay should "refer to" the measures for Chiang when he was visiting mainland, Yang said, without giving details.

He also said Zhang, who cut short his Taiwan tour after the incident, was still receiving medical treatment in Beijing.

Asked to comment reports that lawmaker Wang was under threat of violence to apologize, Yang said the story was "a lie full of loopholes and contradictions".

Taiwan media reported that Wang claimed that he was threatened at gunpoint by a local businessman Huang Ju-yi to apologise in public for the incident involving Zhang. But Huang told police that he had known Wang for many years and he did not threaten Wang, nor did anything illegal.

Yang said the lie was fabricated and spread by a very few people on the eve of Chen's visit to Taiwan. "It has clear political motives," he said, adding that he believed the lie would not easily fool the Taiwan public.