Kuomintang (KMT) Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung said in Shanghai he hoped the cross-Strait relationship will be better with concerted efforts of people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Wu said in an interview within Xinhua on Friday that "the sky has cleared after the rain" for the cross-Strait relationship, and as long as the both sides work together, the relationship will be better.

Shanghai was the third stop on Wu's six-day mainland tour. He met with General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee Hu Jintao in Beijing on Wednesday.

"Through talks with General Secretary Hu, we deeply felt his goodwill, insight and vision in developing cross-Strait relations, " Wu said.

Hu called for resuming exchanges and talks, based on the "1992 Consensus", between the mainland's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) and Taiwan's Strait Exchange Foundation (SEF), as early as possible, and practically solving problems concerning the two sides through talks on equal footing.

Once the ARATS-SEF dialogue is resumed, priority should be given to issues including cross-Strait weekend chartered flights and mainland tourists' traveling to Taiwan, which are of the biggest concern to people on both sides of the Strait, said Hu.

Wu said that the cross-Strait relationship has been in a low ebb over the past eight years, but exchanges between the KMT and the CPC have been one of the stabilizing forces in the relationship.

The KMT has won two important elections in Taiwan recently, Wu said, which showed that the mainstream opinion of the Taiwan people identified with what the KMT stood for, and most of the Taiwan people agree that the two sides on the Strait can achieve peaceful development and a win-win situation.

He added that the KMT has listed the "common aspiration and prospects for cross-Strait peace and development" into its guiding political principle and will play a more active role in enhancing the relationship.

Wu said the Taiwan people deeply felt the pain and grief of the Sichuan earthquake victims, and their care and support were spontaneous and voluntary, which showed the love of the compatriots.

He said he hoped the people in Sichuan could stay strong and pull themselves together against the disaster.

Wu, who is scheduled to attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games in August, added that he wished the Olympics a complete success.

(Xinhua News Agency May 31, 2008)