Zeng Jianhui, a National People's Congress of China (NPC) Standing Committee member and chairman of the NPC's Foreign Affairs Committee, said with common efforts by both sides in recent years, the NPC and the US Congress have successfully established a system of exchange.

This system shows that the US Congress attaches great importance to exchange and cooperation with the NPC, said Zeng, who is currently visiting the United States as the head of a NPC delegation at the invitation of the US-China Inter-parliamentary Exchange Group.

"Through exchanges the two sides have enhanced mutual trust and understanding, narrowed differences and reached common ground in many fields,'' Zeng said.

Zeng told reporters that during his talks on Wednesday with US House Speaker Dennis Hastert and chairman of the US House International Relations Committee, Henry J. Hyde, both countries stressed common ground, and expressed their hopes of strengthening cooperation between the two countries in trade, counter-terrorism and the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons.

Both sides agreed that the Sino-US relationship is one of the most important in international relations and hoped that the two countries would maintain the recent momentum in bilateral relations, he said.

In response to questions on Taiwan, Zeng said the Taiwan issue is the most important and sensitive issue between China and the United States. He warned that US arms sales to Taiwan and the upgrading of military relations with the island would send a wrong signal to Taiwan authorities.

In 1999, Hastert instructed his House of Representatives to establish the US-China Inter-parliamentary Exchange Group, which is one of only four official inter-parliamentary exchange groups between the United States and other countries. As a reciprocal gesture, the NPC created the Sino-US Inter-parliamentary Exchange Group, with Zeng serving as its chairman, in December 1999.

(China Daily June 8, 2002)