BEIJING (AP): Taiwan and China signed a formal agreement Friday to expand charter flights and tourism, a step towards restoring transport links severed 59 years ago.

The expansion of charter flights was a key agenda for the talks that began Thursday between Taiwan's Straits Exchange Foundation and its mainland counterpart, the first formal negotiations between the sides since 1999.

The expansion of tourism will help build confidence between the rivals, which divided amid civil war in 1949 and whose relationship has veered from strained to outright hostile.

Charter flights are now limited to four annual Chinese holidays and are usually packed with Taiwanese residents on the mainland returning home to visit family.

Taiwan's 19-member negotiating team is being led by Chiang Pin-kung, chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation, and includes two vice Cabinet ministers _ the highest-ranking Taiwanese officials ever to participate in bilateral talks.

The 75-year-old economic planner said earlier this week he expected to sign an accord opening the way for 36 charter flights to cross the 100-mile-wide (160-kilometer-wide) Taiwan Strait every weekend. Taiwan has banned direct scheduled flights since the 1949 division.

Newly elected Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou wants to gradually expand the charter schedule and supplement it with regularly scheduled flights by the summer of 2009. His target is to have 1 million Chinese tourists go to Taiwan every year, well above the current level of 80,000.

On Thursday the two sides agreed to set up permanent offices in each other's territory for the first time, one of the biggest steps the political rivals have taken to build mutual trust.

There were few details and no time frame given for establishing the offices, which could perform consular functions such as issuing travel documentation.

Foundation Deputy Secretary-General Pong Jian-kuo said a consensus on exchanging offices was reached during the talks, saying they would ``facilitate people's exchanges and traveling across the Strait.''

``It's a very positive and healthy development in relations across the Taiwan Strait,'' said political scientist George Tsai of Taiwan's Chinese Culture University.

Tsai cautioned, however, that the offices would be limited to dealing with administrative matters and would offer little direct help in dealing with core political differences such as China's threatening missile arsenal and Taiwan's desire for diplomatic recognition overseas.

Beijing's communist administration, which seized power on the mainland in 1949, considers Taiwan part of its territory and refuses to recognize the government in Taipei, which means that negotiations must be carried out by semiofficial bodies.

The talks are scheduled to run through Friday at a state guesthouse in western Beijing.