Taiwan appears sceptical about China's missile-reduction offer

Taiwan's Ministry of National Defence (MND) has reacted cautiously to a statement from the Chinese government that it could be willing to remove some of the estimated 1,600 missiles that are currently aimed at the island.

However, an MND spokeswoman welcomed on 3 January Chinese President Hu Jintao's comments calling for cross-strait military exchanges and the introduction of confidence-building measures to stabilise the situation in the Taiwan Strait.

Hu's remarks came during a speech marking the 30th anniversary of the establishment of official Sino-US relations, in which he said that China would "promote any moves conducive to peaceful cross-strait development".

However, the MND spokeswoman said that, while the withdrawal of missiles would be a positive step on China's part, the "overture may not be the goodwill gesture it seems", given the ease with which China could redeploy the mostly mobile systems.

China has around 1,400 Dong Feng 11 and Dong Feng 15 short-range ballistic missiles and nearly 200 cruise missiles targeting Taiwan, according to MND estimates. 166 of 486 words