During a vote stumping visit to the island, which lies offshore the Chinaese city of Xiamen, yesterday, Hsieh issued a "Kinmen Declaration" in which the former DPP premier said that, if elected, he will invite the PRC leader to Kinmen Island in order to hold talks on bilateral economic development, peace and other matters.

The DPP candidate outlined the three points of his "Kinmen Declaration" in a speech at a rally marking the establishment of a "Taiwan Renovation" campaign headquarters attended by over 500 supporters.

The three points included, first, advocation that Taiwan become a "non-war zone" and that Kinmen should become a "peace zone"; second, that Taiwan will continue to develop and promote the democratization of China; and, third, that if elected president, he will invite Hu Jintao to visit Taiwan and Kinmen and hold a set of "historic Kinmen Talks."

Hsieh related that Taipei and Beijing had previously held consultations in third countries and that cross-strait talks would take on special historical significance and attract great international media attention if they could be convened in the former war zone of Kinmen.

The offshore island group was the site of repeated clashes in the 1950s between the armed forces of the PRC and the Kuomintang during the Chinese Civil War, which resulted in the KMT being driven out of the Mainland and onto Taiwan.

Hsieh was also evidently referring to discussions in Singapore in April 1993 between the late chairman of Taipei's non-official Strait Exchange Foundation, Koo Chen-foo, and the late chairman of Beijing's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, Wang Daohan (汪道涵).

Regarding the current cross-strait disputes, Hsieh said that the two sides should "set aside" disputes and not allow unsolvable problems to impede the resolution of problems that can be solved.

On the question of liberalizing "direct links" between the PRC and Taiwan, the DPP candidate stated that his views differed from his KMT rival, former Taipei City mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).

While Hsieh thinks Kinmen should be a "subject," he said that Ma had called for Taiwan's transformation into a "free trade zone," a plan that would cause Kinmen to turn into an "unimportant fishing village."

Instead, Hsieh said that so long as Taiwan remained a "subject," Kinmen could become a highly valued "diamond belt" as a "special zone of peace" between Taiwan and China.

The DPP candidate also expressed disagreement with what he described as Ma's advocacy of "great direct links" through the liberalization of seven Taiwan ports for direct transportation and commerce with the PRC and complete liberalization of direct cross-strait air and sea transportation ties.

Saying that the economies of Kinmen and Matsu would plunge into recession under Ma's blueprint, Hsieh proposed the expansion of chartered flights for both the "direct links" between Taiwan and the PRC and "small links" between Kinmen and Matsu and Chinese airports.

In addition, Hsieh stated that he advocated the allotment of more resources to Kinmen and the release of military-owned land to complement tourism development plans.