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TAIPEI: The chairman of Taiwan's incoming ruling party Kuomintang (KMT) is planning to visit China and meet President Hu Jintao, a report said Sunday.
The Taipei-based China Times said that Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung plans to meet Hu during a historic trip to the mainland in June.
"Chairman Wu has said he did not rule out visiting the mainland," KMT spokesman Huang Yu-chen told AFP in response to the report.
However, he said: "As of now, no schedule has been drafted as such a visit involves a further arrangement with the mainland side."
If the visit is realised, Wu would become the island's first ruling-party chief to meet Hu.
The Times said that top of the agenda for the planned Wu-Hu meeting would be launching weekend charter flights between the cross-Strait rivals and allowing more Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan.
Taiwan is set to undergo significant political changes that look likely to see a new era in relations with China.
Taiwan and China split in 1949 after a civil war and Beijing still claims the island as part of its territory awaiting reunification.
Ma Ying-jeou of the Beijing-friendly KMT trounced Frank Hsieh of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in a landslide in a March presidential vote.
Ma will succeed the outgoing President Chen Shui-bian of the DPP on May 20 after Chen's second and final four-year term expires.
Ma has vowed to improve relations with China, increase trade, tourism and transport links and work on a peace treaty to thaw relations.
In January parliamentary elections KMT enjoyed a comfortable election victory over the DPP, with the KMT also officially becoming the ruling party on May 20.
Taiwan's incoming top negotiator with China Chiang Pin-kun flew to China Thursday last week for a five-day visit, a sign of warming relations.
Meanwhile, local newspapers said former KMT chairman Lien Chan would travel to China Monday and meet Hu, three years after his historic trip to the mainland when the KMT was in opposition.
Lien became the first KMT leader to visit the mainland in 56 years when he met Hu in 2005 to formally end hostilities with the communists. - AFP/ac
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