Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said in Beijing Thursday that China expresses deep regret and strong dissatisfaction with former Japanese Prime Minister Mori Yoshiro's visit to Taiwan.

According to report, Mori has left Japan for Taiwan Thursday, becoming the second former Japanese Prime Minister to visit Taiwan after Fukuda Takeo.

China has time and again lodged serious representations with the Japanese side and expressed firm opposition to Mori's visit, said Liu.

Liu reiterated that the Taiwan issue is a major principled problem concerning China's sovereignty and territorial integrity so China firmly opposes Japan to have official relations or relations with political feature in any form with Taiwan.

China seriously demands Japan to honor its words with actual deeds by observing the principles set forth in the China-Japan Joint Statement and other two major political documents and the commitments Japan made on Taiwan issue, he said.

He urged the Japanese side to make effective measures immediately and wipe out negative political effect for safeguarding the China-Japan relations.

Speaking of the Chinese victims of Japan's abandoned chemical weapons in Qiqihar, Liu said that the victims will receive compensation of 300 million yen from the Japanese government in a few days.
??
He said the Chinese government would continue to urge the Japanese government to speed up destroying the lethal and environmentally-threatening chemical weapons abandoned by Japanese invaders during World War II, in line with the agreements reached by the two governments and relevant international treaties.

A toxic gas leak killed one person and injured 43 others after barrels of mustard gas were dug up at a construction site in Qiqihar, in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, on August 4.

(Xinhua News Agency December 26, 2003)??