BEIJING, Nov. 12 (Xinhuanet) -- The Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council said here Wednesday it would do its best to fulfill the family reunion wishes of Taiwanese businessmen and their relatives with more convenient cross-strait transport service for the coming Spring Festival.

   The mainland of China has always supported an early direct air link between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait and would facilitate any efforts to bring about such links and benefit people on both sides including the Taiwan business people, said spokesman Li Weiyi.

   The direct cross-strait air transport is purely an economic matter and therefore should be free from any political influences, said Li.

   He reaffirmed that the mainland firmly opposes putting cross-strait air transport under the category of "state to state" transport, negotiating related issues under the framework of "one side, one country" and internationalizing cross-strait air routes technically.

   During the traditional Spring Festival period early this year, six Taiwan-based airlines ran 16 cross-strait chartered flights between Taipei, Kaohsiung and Shanghai, bringing Taiwanese business people home for the Lunar New Year festival and back to the mainland.

   This was the first time since the founding of new China in 1949 that Taiwanese civil airplanes were permitted to fly to the Chinese mainland. However, owing to restrictions from Taiwan authorities, the flights had to stopover in Hong Kong or Macao on their way to or from Shanghai, and no airline from the Chinese mainland was involved. Enditem