|
BEIJING: Chinese President Hu Jintao called for peaceful relations
with Taiwan as he met the head of the island’s ruling party here
Wednesday in the highest-level contact since the two sides split in
1949.
Putting aside decades of tensions that have made
the Taiwan Strait one of the world’s potential flashpoints, Hu
shook hands with Kuomintang Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung during a
red-carpet welcome at the Great Hall of the People.
The pair then posed with their delegations for a
photograph before heading into their historic meeting, with the
events broadcast on China’s state-run television.
“Based on the past exchanges and
communications between the two parties, and under the new situation,
I hope we can promote cross-strait relations, exchange opinions and
look to the future, and push forward the peaceful development of
cross-strait relations,” Hu said in his opening remarks to the
meeting.
Wu in turn said the Chinese and Taiwanese should
make sure that their people never take up arms against each other
again, in comments that also touched on this month’s devastating
earthquake in China’s southwest.
“We cannot guarantee there won’t be any
natural disasters any more on both sides of the strait, but through
our mutual efforts, we can ensure there is no war,” he said.
Wednesday’s meeting is part of a dramatic
easing of tensions between China and Taiwan in recent months that is
likely to see the two sides quickly resume a formal dialogue that
has been suspended for over a decade.
The Kuomintang’s defeat of the
pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in Taiwan’s
presidential polls in March has been the trigger for the
rapprochement.
Ma Ying-jeou, who was sworn in as president last
week, has taken a much more conciliatory approach with China than
his predecessor, Chen Shui-bian, whose pro-independence rhetoric
angered the mainland’s communist leadership.
China and Taiwan split at the end of a civil war
in 1949, with the Kuomintang (KMT) nationalist forces retreating to
the island after the communists took control of the mainland.
For decades, the KMT and China’s Communist
Party were bitter foes. But the KMT in recent years staked out a
platform of reconciliation in contrast to Chen’s DPP.
China remains determined to bring Taiwan back
into its political fold, and repeatedly warned during Chen’s eight
years in power that it was prepared to use force to do so.
In some of the most significant developments of
the recent thaw, Ma pledged to deepen economic links between the two
sides, vowed not to enter an arms race and pushed for a restart of a
formal bilateral dialogue.
-- AFP
|
