"This is the very aspiration of the people," Jiang said in his recent interview with the New York Times on August 8.

Jiang said, "Any attempt to split Taiwan from China will never get anywhere. China is bound to achieve complete reunification."

Taiwan is part of the Chinese territory. The Taiwan question bears on the national pride of the entire Chinese people, the sovereignty, territorial integrity and development of China, Jiang stressed.

Jiang said, "People living on both sides of the Taiwan Straits are Chinese. Blood is thicker than water. No one else is more eager than us for a peaceful solution to the Taiwan question.

"It is precisely for the purpose of safeguarding the interests of our Taiwan compatriots to the fullest extent that we have proposed and stuck to the basic principle of 'peaceful reunification and one country, two systems'," he said.

"However, we cannot renounce the use of force. If we did, a peaceful reunification would become impossible."

When asked to answer a question about the Bush Administration's planned arms sales to Taiwan, Jiang said, "Such practice of the U. S. will not only affect the stability across the Taiwan Straits and hinder the improvement of China-US relations, but also harm its own interest in the end."

There are three joint communiques between China and the US, namely the 1972 Shanghai Joint Communique, the 1979 Joint Communique on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations and the Joint Communique issued on August 17, 1982.

They together constitute the political foundation of the China- US relationship, he said.

Jiang stressed that in the three joint communiques, the US clearly commits itself to the one-China policy.

The US in the August 17 Communique states that it does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan and that it intends gradually to reduce its sales of arms to Taiwan and find a final resolution over a period of time, he said.

"The reality, however, is that over all these years, the US has never stopped selling sophisticated arms to China's Taiwan. Furthermore, it has upgraded its arms sales to Taiwan in both quantitative and qualitative terms," he said.

"This has deeply hurt the Chinese people, interfered in China's internal affairs and made a peaceful solution to the Taiwan question more difficult," he said.

(Xinhua News Agency 08/13/2001)