Taipei  - Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou on Saturday urged China to resume dialogue with Taipei and offered psychological counselling to China's earthquake survivors.

Ma made the call and the offer during a send-off tea party for Wu Poh-hsiung, chairman of the pro-China ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), who will visit China on Monday and meet Chinese President Hu Jintao.

He had asked Wu to express Taiwan's hopes for a resumption of the dialogue, Ma said and expressed hope that both sides could put aside their differences in a bid to resolve outstanding issues.

"Some of our problems were created by history and cannot be solved now. So we should focus on problems that can be solved now," he said, in an obvious reference to Taiwan-China unification.

Ma also said Taiwan wants to provide psychological counselling to China's quake survivors and "adopt" quake-stricken regions by contributing to reconstruction there.

The May 12 quake, measuring 8 on the Richter scale, has killed more than 60,000 and injured more than 350,000 people in China's Sichuan Province.

Taiwan was the first to offer money, aid and to send search and rescue teams to Sichuan.

Taiwan's timely and generous aid has touched Chinese leaders, prompting President Hu Jintao, in his capacity as secretary-general of the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP), to invite KMT Chairman Wu to visit China to promote cross-strait exchanges.

Wu is expected to meet Hu on Wednesday to discuss the resumption of dialogue, launch cross-strait weekend charter flights, Chinese tourists visiting Taiwan and aid to Sichuan quake regions.

Taiwan and China have been split since 1949 when the Republic of China lost the Chinese Civil War and fled to Taiwan to set up its government-in-exile.

In 1993, as tension eased, Beijing and Taipei held historic talks in Singapore, and conducted a series of talks afterwards to discuss legal disputes, fishing quarrels and the deportation of illegal Chinese job seekers and plane hijackers.

China halted the talks in 1995 to retaliate against former president Lee Teng-hui's advocating Taiwan independence.

The 1993 dialogue was held between Taiwan's Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and China's Association for Relations across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS). Taiwan has urged China to resume the dialogue but Beijing refused, asking Taipei to first accept the "one china" principle which says there is one China and Taiwan is part of China.

Ma, who was sworn in on May 20, said Taiwan is willing to accept the "one China" principle. However, it must be allowed to interpret it in its own way meaning - there was one China in history, but since 1949 China has been split into two parts which do not belong to each other. (dpa)