Published by: World Tibet Network News Tuesday, September 16, 1997

BEIJING, Sept 15 (Reuter) - China's President Jiang Zemin has renewed an appeal to Taiwan to holds talks on reunification if the island abandons a drive for independence, Foreign Minister Qian Qichen said.

"We are determined and confident and we can realise the peaceful reunification of the motherland," the Xinhua news agency in an overnight report quoted Qian as saying during the Communist Party's ongoing 15th congress.

A policy speech by Jiang last Friday in which the party chief did not rule out the use of force to recover the island had marked a renewal of Beijing's appeal for talks, Qian said.

"Jiang Zemin renewed his solemn appeal... that the two sides of the Straits can hold negotiations... in accordance with the principle that there is only one China," Qian was quoted as saying.

Taiwan has been divided from the mainland since the defeated Nationalists set up a government there after the communists drove them off the mainland at the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949.

Both China and Taiwan espouse the goal of reunification, but Beijing suspects Taipei of secretly working for independence.

Qian appeared to take a moderate stance toward the island, regarded as a breakaway province by China, and did not repeat Beijing's long-standing warning that it would invade if Taipei declared

independence.

The "one country, two systems" formula used to handle the return of Hong Kong from British rule last July would serve as a basic principle for securing Taiwan's peaceful reunification, Qian said.

Under Beijing's proposal, Taiwan could keep its current democratic political system and market economy, but would fall under Chinese sovereignty.