A top Chinese Communist Party leader vowed on Friday that Beijing would block any moves towards Taiwan independence but would work for a peaceful solution to the stand-off.
Beijing claims sovereignty over the self-ruled island and its 23 million people and has threatened to use force if it formally declares independence.
On Monday independence-leaning President Chen Shui-bian scrapped Taiwan's National Unification Council and its 15-year-old unification guidelines, defying warnings from Beijing and Washington.
The council had been established to reassure China that the island would not go its own way.
Addressing Friday's opening session of China's parliamentary advisory body in Beijing, its chairman, Jia Qinglin, made no direct mention of Chen's scrapping of the guidelines.
"We will never accept Taiwan independence, and will uncompromisingly oppose and keep in check secessionist forces advocating Taiwan independence and their activities," Jia told the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).
"We must continue with utmost sincerity and vigour to safeguard and promote the peaceful and stable development of cross-Strait relations and strive for peaceful reunification," he told the 2,000 delegates meeting at the Great Hall of the People.
The remarks by Jia, ranked fourth in the party hierarchy, marked a softening from President Hu Jintao's comments on Tuesday, when he called Chen's move "a grave provocation to the one-China principle ... and to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait".
"We must continue to unwaveringly implement the basic principles of peaceful reunification and 'one country, two systems'," Jia said, referring to the system under which capitalist Hong Kong returned to the fold in 1997 and which Beijing insists would also be applied to Taiwan.
China has considered Taiwan a breakaway province since the end of the civil war on the mainland in 1949 when the defeated Nationalist government fled into exile there.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday that Chen's act was "a brazen provocation of the one-China principle universally adhered to by the international community, and serious sabotage of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait".
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