Middle-ranking members of his party can come - unofficially
A senior mainland official hinted yesterday that Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian was not welcome to visit the mainland.
Wang Zaixi , deputy director of the State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office, told a news conference that Beijing was ready to make contact with any political party on the island, including the Democratic Progressive Party, as long as it recognised the 'one China' principle, scrapped pro-independence wording from its party charter and stopped supporting the island's push for statehood.
The People First Party (PFP) and the Kuomintang, which upheld the '1992 consensus' on 'one China' and opposed Taiwanese independence, had established a basis for dialogue, he said. PFP chairman James Soong Chu-yu is scheduled to begin a visit to the mainland tomorrow.
Mr Wang said the '1992 consensus' on the 'one China' principle reached between the mainland's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait and Taiwan's Straits Exchange Foundation had been backed by the respective governments, which made it different in nature from party-to-party contact.
'We hope to expand the consensus,' he said.
Although Mr Soong has been entrusted by Mr Chen with a message to Beijing, Mr Wang said the PFP leader's talks next week would concern inter-party and cross-strait relationships.
