Chairman Lien Chan of the Kuomintang (KMT) Party of China said Thursday that a peaceful and win-win future to be achieved through reconciliation and 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.

Lien called the KMT delegation mainland visit a "hard-won" one." We very much cherish the treasured opportunity and are willing to hear more, see more, learn more and talk more," the KMT chairman said.

"In Beijing which is a world famous city," Lien said, "here we can see the coexistence of tradition and modernity as well as the melding of Chinese and world culture."

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 the Peking University.

Beijing is the second leg on Lien's eight-day mainland visit itinerary, next to Nanjing, and followed by Xi'an and Shanghai.

After he arrived at Nanjing Tuesday afternoon, Lien said 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 eastern coastal Fujian Province.

After warm-ups led by KMT Vice Chairman Chiang Pin-kung in March, Lien was invited by the CPC Central Committee and General Secretary Hu Jintao.

The Hu-Lien meeting, which was scheduled for 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 till now.

Lien's mainland visit was described by the KMT as a "journey of peace".

In a speech after paying homage to Dr. Sun Yat-sen (1886-1925), founding father of the KMT Wednesday morning, Lien said the two sides across the Straits should strive to achieve common prosperity in a peaceful and going-all-out mentality against the backdrop of the current "stalemate".

Besides Nanjing and Beijing, Lien was scheduled to visit Xi'an, where he was born on the eve of the invasion of the Japanese troops, and Shanghai, the biggest financial and trade hub in the mainland.

(Xinhua News Agency April 28, 2005)