Beijing offers military talks

BEIJING - The Chinese mainland offered on Wednesday to open talks on military issues with Taiwan "in due course", a move that experts said could cool a potential flashpoint in the Asia-Pacific region and help warm cross-Straits ties.

"We advocate conducting contacts and exchanges on military issues, including the cross-Straits military deployment issue, in a proper way at a proper time," Yang Yi, spokesman of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, told a regular news briefing in Beijing.

He told reporters that Beijing wanted to "probe establishing a cross-Straits military security mutual trust mechanism to help stabilize the situation in the Taiwan Straits and ease military security concerns".