TAIPEI: An unofficial envoy of Philippine President Benigno Aquino was in Taipei Monday, officials said, in an attempt to cool a row over the deportation of 14 Taiwanese to China, officials said.
Manuel Roxas spent hours Monday in closed-door meetings with Taiwan's foreign minister Timothy Yang.
But his mission was complicated by comments made in Manila by Aquino's spokesman, who said the Philippines would not apologise for the incident, which saw the 14 suspected fraudsters deported to China against Taipei's wishes.
China and Taiwan have been ruled separately since the end of a civil war in 1949, although Beijing claims the island. The Philippines maintains formal ties with China only but pursues economic and cultural links with Taiwan.
Asked Monday about the likelihood of Manila apologising for the deportations, presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said it would not happen.
"We believe in the process that we undertook," he said, speaking on Philippine government radio about the deportation earlier this month.
"We asked them for their identification and they claimed they were Taiwanese but as we understand it, they failed to produce any identification that they were Taiwanese nationals.
"That was the reason why they were repatriated to China."
Taiwan has expressed fury over the affair, saying the group should have been sent back to the island rather than mainland China, and warned the incident had dealt a serious blow to bilateral ties.
Foreign minister Yang said earlier he had yet to arrange a meeting between Roxas and President Ma Ying-jeou, adding it depended on whether the unofficial envoy came up with "concrete measures to amend ties".
Taipei has raised the screening period for Filipino workers to the maximum four months and threatened to bar them from entry after the row.
There are about 72,000 Filipino workers in Taiwan, sending hundreds of millions of dollars a year back to the Philippines.
"We all know that the Taiwan government had tightened up its regulations regarding Filipinos there and that is one of our concerns," said Lacierda.
"We hope that these stringent rules toward the overseas contract workers be relaxed."
