Taipei - Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou on Wednesday urged the United States to sell more modern weapons systems to Taiwan to maintain the military balance across the Taiwan Strait.

Ma made the call during a video conference with US academics to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Washington's signing the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA).

Taipei - Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou Friday urged the public to support the signing of an economic cooperation pact with China before it is too late.

"If we don't do it today, we will regret it tomorrow," he said in an interview with local cable news network ERA TV.

He said Taiwan would stand to lose 114,000 jobs after the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN countries set up a free trade zone with China, Japan and South Korea as early as 2010.

Taipei  - Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou has instructed the government to study the feasibility of building a 10-kilometre bridge between Taiwan's offshore island Kinmen and China's Fujian Province, a newspaper said on Thursday.

At a dinner party with government officials Wednesday, Ma showed keen interest in the Kinmen-Xiamen bridge, the United Daily News said.

Taipei - Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou Tuesday said his government still needs time to digest the content of a goodwill speech on cross-strait relations recently made by his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao.

"We are still making further efforts to try to understand what exactly (Hu) wanted to convey through his speech," said Ma in a meeting with a group of visiting US scholars.

Through a press statement, he said the Chinese leader "had in certain aspect made concrete responses to some of Taiwan's concerns." Ma did not elaborate.

Taipei - Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, in his New Year speech on Thursday, vowed to seek peace with China while safeguarding the island's sovereignty.

Braving a morning chill, Ma joined tens of thousands in Taipei for a traditional national flag-raising ceremony in front of the Presidential Office.

In his New Year speech, Ma said that 2008 saw the start of Taiwan-China economic and trade normalization by launching air, sea and postal links.

Taipei  - President Ma Ying-jeou said Wednesday that China is the key to Taiwan's economy and the third round of Taipei-Beijing talks will focus on economic cooperation.

In an interview with the Radio Taiwan International (RTI) broadcast live to the mainland, Ma explained his China policy and answered some of the 8,000 questions posted by Chinese listeners online.

"Trade with China has reached a record high of 130 billion US dollars. That is significant because foreign trade has always been key to Taiwan's economic growth, sometimes contributing as much as 75 per cent to Taiwan's economic growth," he said.