Chairman Lien Chan of the Kuomintang
(KMT) Party of China said Thursday that dialogue is the common
aspiration of the people across the Taiwan Straits.
"Realization of the peaceful and
win-win future is our shared historical responsibility and
inevitable public outcry," Lien said at the aprons of the Beijing
Capital International Airport upon his arrival at about 11:10
am.
Lien called the KMT
delegation’s mainland visit a "hard-won" one. "We very much
cherish the treasured opportunity and are willing to hear more, see
more, learn more and communicate more," the KMT chairman said.
"In Beijing which is a world famous
city," Lien said, "we can see the coexistence of tradition and
modernity as well as the melding of Chinese and world
cultures."
Lien was scheduled in Beijing to meet
Hu
Jintao, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC)
Central Committee, and deliver a speech at Peking University.
Beijing is the second leg on Lien's
eight-day mainland visit itinerary, next to Nanjing. His next steps
are Xi'an and Shanghai.
After he arrived in Nanjing Tuesday
afternoon, Lien said that the visit would be a "historic first
step" for the promotion of cross-Straits relations.
This is the first time that the KMT
chairman has set feet on the mainland since 1949 when the KMT lost
a civil war to the CPC and fled to Taiwan, an island province
opposite to the coastal Fujian Province across the Straits.
The Hu-Lien summit, which will be held
on Friday, will be the first of its kind between the CPC and the
KMT in nearly six decades.
Late CPC Chairman Mao Zedong and KMT
Chairman Chiang Kai-shek conducted the latest meeting in August
1945 in Chongqing, the wartime capital of China, in a bid to
negotiate a truce. The two sides failed to clinch a formal
peace.
Lien's mainland visit was described by
the KMT as a "journey of peace."
(Xinhua News Agency April 28,
2005)
