KMT leader urges Taiwan authorities to negotiate end of hostility

Visiting Chinese Kuomintang Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan said in Shanghai Monday that he hoped the Taiwan authorities would actively prepare for negotiations with the mainland to end the state of hostility across the Taiwan Straits.

Lien told a press conference that top leaders of the KMT and the Communist Party of China (CPC) had reached a consensus on ending the state of hostility across the Taiwan Straits and on promoting the signing of a peace accord across the Straits.

"The KMT hopes the Taiwan authorities will accept the consensus and put it into practice through negotiations with the mainland," said Lien, who is heading a 60-member KMT delegation in the last leg of the eight-day tour to the mainland.

On Friday, Lien and Hu Jintao, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, held a historic meeting in Beijing, the first since the KMT lost China's civil war and fled to Taiwan in 1949.

A press communique was issued following the meeting saying that the two parties have agreed to work together to promote "the formal end of the state of hostility across the Straits."

Lien recalled that at the end of 2003, he also mentioned the issue when he put forward a road map for cross-Straits peace, acknowledging that it was only a unilateral proposal.

"But the proposal this time is of great influence and is bound to create a new environment of peace for Taiwan if the state of hostility across the Straits is put to an end," he said.

Also at the press conference, Lien called for the establishment of a military mutual trust mechanism across the Taiwan Straits, pledging that when the delegation is back in Taiwan, his party will "actively push" the Taiwan authorities to make "active relative preparations."

"As soon as the two sides across the Straits enjoy military trust, the security concerns of the Taiwan people should be resolved," he said.

The KMT delegation arrived here Sunday and is scheduled to return to Taiwan on May 3 (Tuesday).