TAIPEI - TAIWAN plans to talk to China on expanding their cross-strait flight routes to include other global destinations at a meeting later this year, said a Taipei official on Tuesday, adding that the move will benefit airlines on both sides.

Under a landmark deal last July, airlines started weekly, non-stop chartered flights between Taiwan and China. But the direct, passenger flights were only on weekends and served mainly Taiwanese businessmen based in China and tourist groups.

Top negotiators from Taiwan and China have met several times over the past few months and have signed a flurry of deals to expand trade ties on both sides, in growing signs of warming ties after President Ma Ying-jeou took office last May.

Last month, both sides deepened their air links with their first direct, daily cross-strait flights since the end of the civil war in 1949. Direct ship traffic and mail service also began the same month.

If the deal to expand cross-strait flight routes to include other global destinations materialises, a Taiwan carrier could fly straight from Taipei to a Chinese city, where it can pick up more passengers and fly on to a European city, for example.

Taiwan's airlines, such as China Airlines and Eva Airways, and Chinese carriers like Air China and China Southern Airlines have long awaited such a move.

'We've suggested including this issue in our next negotiations. We're quite sure that China would want to talk about this as well because they have similar needs,' said Mr Oliver Yu, a Vice-Transport Minister, on the sidelines of a news conference.

Analysts have said the island will need to seize the moment if it wants to compete against transportation hubs in the region, such as Singapore and Hong Kong.

Air China and other Chinese carriers flew 176.24 million passengers from January to November last year, up only 2.9 per cent from the previous year, latest official data shows, as the economy slowed.

In another sign of warming ties, a Chinese naval task force has begun escorting a Taiwanese merchant ship and three other vessels in the Gulf of Aden in a mission to protect them from Somali pirates.

Two Chinese special forces teams are aboard the merchant ships, which departed on Monday, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The Chinese destroyer Wuhan is accompanying the ships.

It is not clear if the 70,426-tonne Formosaproduct Cosmos, owned by Taiwan's Formosa Plastics Marine Corp, had directly asked the mainland for an armed escort.

Hong Kong's South China Morning Post yesterday said 'the mission is historic for the People's Liberation Army, whose primary political objective is to capture Taiwan if the island moves to seek full independence'. It also serves as a political message for Beijing, which sees itself as the sole legitimate protector of all Chinese.

REUTERS, BLOOMBERG