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Chinese negotiator calls pacts with Taiwan his lifetime pursuits

ROC Central News Agency

Taipei, Nov. 4 (CNA) China's top negotiator with Taiwan Chen Yunlin called the four pacts he inked with his Taiwan counterpart Chiang Pin-kung Tuesday his supreme lifetime pursuits.

"I appreciate the opportunity offered to me by history to clinch the pacts and I thank the many people who helped facilitate my visit to the island, " Chen said at a dinner party in his honor hosted by Kuomintang Honorary Chairman Lien Chan Tuesday evening.

"The pacts will bring benefits to people on both sides of the strait and history will prove that they were the right choice, " Chen said, referring to the agreements on expanded air travel services, the establishment of shipping and postal links and on food safety control.

"The pacts realized the dream of many businessmen and ordinary people on both sides of the strait, and would have pleased Koo Cheng-fu, the late chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation and Wang Daohan, the late president of the Association of Relations Across the Taiwan Straits."

Wang was Chen's predecessor as China's top negotiator with Taiwan, while Koo held the position of SEF chairman before his death.

Chen praised his host Lien Chan for helping to facilitate the process by making an ice-breaking trip to China in May 2005, which Chen said turned a new page in the history of cross-strait ties.

He said that the dinner party, which brought together more than one hundred of Chen's local friends, was "the warmest I have ever attend in my life."

While the dinner was being held at a downtown hotel, hundreds of pro-independence activists gathered to protest outside the building.

They tussled with the many police on duty at the venue and shouted anti-communist slogans, which were crafted by the Kuomintang government in the 1950s during the cold war, in an attempt to embarrass both the host and guests at the dinner.

Chen, who is the highest ranking Chinese negotiator ever to set foot on the island, arrived in Taipei Monday for a five-day visit. (By Maubo Chang) Enditem /pc