TAIPEI - Taiwan said Friday it is willing to discuss the planned visit by the mainland's top official for Taiwan affairs, but insisted that Beijing must first send an envoy to the island to negotiate arrangements.

China's government announced last month that Chen Yunlin, director of the Communist Party's Taiwan Affairs Office, had accepted an invitation to an October forum on agricultural trade by Taiwan's opposition Nationalist Party.

Chen's planned trip would be the highest-level visit by a mainland official to the island since Taiwan and Chinese mainland split in 1949 amid civil war.

The two sides have no official ties, and high-level contacts are rare.

"We hope they will appoint a representative to discuss the matter," said Liu Teh-hsiun, a vice chairman of Taiwan's "Mainland Affairs Council."

"We don't have a predesigned way of negotiation or a preferred representative," Liu said. "We will decide on things after they appoint someone."

He said Taiwan's semiofficial "Straits Exchange Foundation" had twice sent letters to its mainland counterpart, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, requesting negotiations on Chen's visit, but has yet to receive a reply.

Both groups are semiofficial organizations set up in 1992 to handle exchanges between the sides.