Taiwan Issues Invitation to Chinese President

China and Taiwan today inched towards reconciliation when the Taiwanese president invited his Chinese counterpart to visit the country and Beijing offered a gift of two pandas.

The gestures marked the close of the highest level contact between the two nations since 1949 as the Taiwanese opposition leader, Lien Chan, returned from an eight-day trip to the mainland.

The Taiwanese - the Chinese nationalists - were on the losing side in China's civil war, and fled to the island after the communist takeover of the mainland. Beijing considers Taiwan to be part of its territory, and has threatened to invade if it declares independence.

While the Taiwanese president, Chen Shui-bian, said he would welcome the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, to the island, he continued to stress his pro-independence stance.

"I hope [Hu] can come to see for himself whether Taiwan is a sovereign, independent country, and what our 23 million people have in mind," Mr Chen said.

Mr Lien said his visit had finished "very happily, smoothly and successfully", and Beijing's parting gestures - there were concessions on fruit imports and tourism as well as the pandas - gave him the chance to deflect criticism from those who had accused him of selling out Taiwan's interests.

The opposition favours unification with China, and Mr Lien's visit could also have boosted him domestically by weakening support for independence.

A Taiwanese declaration of independence would threaten the stability of East Asia region and the wider Pacific area. The Chinese parliament passed an anti-secession law legalising military action should Taiwan move to formal independence, while the US - Taiwan's strongest ally - has pledged to defend it.

Mr Lien began his trip in Nanjing, which was the capital when the nationalists ruled China, and also visited Beijing, Xi'an and Shanghai.

"Wherever we went, we were welcomed by citizens who came voluntarily to show their friendship," he said on his return. "This is the most precious experience for us to remember for every member of the delegation."

China's decision to give two pandas to "compatriots of Taiwan" was announced by Chen Yunlin, the director of the Communist party's Taiwan Work Office.

The offer had been widely expected in Taiwan - late last week, officials were already discussing what to name the animals.

Years ago, a similar gesture by Beijing was refused because Taipei feared it was part of a plot to foster unification. One of the ruling Democratic Progressive party's greatest concerns is that China would insist that Taiwan accepted the pandas as a local Chinese government rather than as a self-governing entity.

"If we accept the pandas, that means we're admitting ourselves we're a local government," Hsu Kuo-yung, a ruling party MP said. "Our lovely next generation is more important than these two lovely animals."

Mr Chen said the only thing that mattered was that Taiwan would have to respect international treaties on protected wildlife.