President and KMT chief break the ice with five-point plan for cross-strait co-operation
Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Hu Jintao and Kuomintang chairman Lien Chan yesterday struck a five-point accord for peace and stability in the first meeting between leaders of the civil war adversaries in 60 years.
As well as ending hostile relations between the two parties, the leaders pledged to work to resume contacts between the mainland and Taiwan and to build a common market by lifting a ban on direct air and shipping links between the two places, according to a communique issued after the meeting.
The statement rejected Taiwanese independence by recognising Beijing's most cherished 'one-China principle'.
Both parties would promote the resumption of talks to pursue the welfare of the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, it said.
Such talks would be held on an equal footing under the '1992 consensus', referring to an agreement reached in 1992, when Taiwan was under KMT rule, that both the island and the mainland belonged to 'one China'. That consensus did open the way for semi-official talks in the early 1990s.