Taiwan's president-elect announced Monday that a scholar and former chief of China affairs will be the intelligence chief in his incoming government.
Su Chi will be secretary general of the National Security Council, an advisory body that gathers intelligence.
The 58-year-old Su was the top China policy adviser during the recent election campaign of Ma Ying-jeou, a Nationalist Party leader who will be sworn in as president next week.
China has been the biggest security threat facing the self-governed island of Taiwan since the two sides split amid civil war in 1949. Beijing still considers Taiwan a part of its territory, to be unified by force if necessary.
Su was the former Nationalist government's chief and the deputy chief of China affairs between 1993 and 2000 _ a time when Taiwan struck a historic deal with China to launch formal negotiations over handling illegal immigrants and other nonpolitical issues.
The formal contacts were suspended in 1998 amid heightened tensions between the rivals.
The Nationalists, who lean toward Taiwan's eventual unification with mainland China, were voted back into power in March after eight years under the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party, which Beijing reviled.
Su promised a balanced approach.
"We will advise the president ... so he can have a composed, overall and balanced understanding" of foreign policy and security affairs, Su told reporters after his appointment was announced.
Su emphasized that he would not abuse his power to bypass the premier and give orders to Cabinet ministers. He was referring to a diplomatic scandal involving one of his predecessors' attempts to persuade Papua New Guinea to switch official diplomatic recognition to Taipei from Beijing in 2006.
Then-intelligence chief Chiou I-jen resigned last week as vice premier pending a corruption probe after acknowledging he arranged for the Foreign Ministry to transfer US$29.8 million (19.5 million) to a middleman to pursue the effort. The middleman disappeared with the money.
The diplomatic bungle underscored the seamier side of the struggle between Taipei and Beijing to curry favor among potential foreign allies.
Taipei has been fighting to bolster its relatively small number of overseas partners as a way of asserting its claims to sovereignty.
