Tuesday, May 3 2005 18:17 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Beijing: Taiwan's main Opposition leader, Lien Chan, today (May 3, 2005) concluded the highest-level political visit to China in six decades on a successful note announcing a slew of new confidence building measures to cool tensions between the two countries, including easing travel restrictions and gifting a pair of giant pandas.

Lien, chairman of the Kuomintang (KMT) party of Taiwan, described his eight-day visit to the Chinese mainland as "pleasant, smooth and successful", and thanked Beijing for its hospitality as well as the latest gestures to boost relations across the Taiwan Straits.

Lien, the main Opposition leader in Taiwan, had a historic handshake with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing on April 29 and normalised his party's ties with the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) and signed an agreement to jointly oppose 'Taiwan independence.'

The meeting with Hu was historic, since it was the highest level of political contacts, since 1945 between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits.

The last high-level meeting between the CPC and KMT took place in August 1945, when late 'chairman' Mao Zedong and KMT chairman Chiang Kai-Shek met in Chongqing, a major city in southwest China, to negotiate an end to the civil war.

Speaking at the Shanghai, the last stop of his eight-day "journey of peace" that also brought him to Nanjing, Beijing and Xi'an, he said that the visit was a memorable experience for his 60-member delegation, which helped normalise relations between the KMT and the CPC.

Earlier, China announced that it will gift Taiwan compatriots a pair of giant pandas, remove a ban for mainland residents to travel to the island and open its market wider to fruits produced in Taiwan.

"People on both sides of the Taiwan Straits are pleased with the mainland's decision to donate a pair of pandas to Taiwan compatriots," Lien was quoted as saying by the Chinese media in the eastern metropolis, Shanghai.

Lien also welcomed Beijing's decisions to expand access of fruits produced in Taiwan to 18 species from the current 12 and to exempt tariff on at least 10 species of Taiwan fruits.

"This is of great significant to farmers in the central and southern parts of Taiwan. The KMT will actively facilitate the issue once we're back in Taiwan," he said.

Beijing's decision to allow its residents to travel to Taiwan on tourism is another "epoch-making" one, he said, while acknowledging that Chinese mainland tourists had helped Hong Kong's economic recovery after the Chinese Government eased travel restrictions.

The director of the Taiwan Work Office of CPC and the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, China's cabinet, Chen Yunlin said that the mainland's commitment to the Taiwan compatriots to keep adopting new policy measures to solve issues of the Taiwan compatriots' concern and to safeguard their legitimate rights and interests.

Lien will be followed by another Taiwan political leader, Chairman of the People First Party James Soong who is scheduled to visit China from May 5th.

Tensions have been escalating across the Taiwan Straits ever since the pro-independence-minded Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and came to power in Taiwan in 2000.