On December 27, 2004, State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan who was on a visit in the West Bank city of Ramallah met with Mahmoud Abbas, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and other Palestinian leaders.

Tang first conveyed an oral message of President Hu Jintao. Tang said that China and Palestine enjoy deep traditional friendship and special cooperative relations. The oral message of President Hu Jintao fully reflects the importance attached by the Chinese leaders to developing China-Palestine relations in the new era. China values most its traditional friendship with Palestine and stands ready to further strengthen bilateral

Abbas asked Tang to convey his greetings and gratitude to President Hu Jintao. He said that Palestine attaches great importance to its traditional friendship with China and Palestine-China friendship has become one of the most important diplomatic relations of Palestine. China always supports the justice cause of the Palestinian people to restore their legitimate national rights, which the Palestinian government and people highly compliment and admire. He believes that the Palestine-China relations will score greater development in the new era.

Both sides mainly exchanged opinions on the current situation in the Middle East. Recently the Middle East situation showed some positive changes. The international community generally thinks positively of the series of active measures taken by Palestine in order to resume the negotiations. China also appreciates that and sincerely hopes Palestine and Israel work together to build mutual trust, try to resume the peace talks as soon as possible, accelerate implementation of the "roadmap" plan and establish a Palestinian state at the earliest date possible. The international community should actively push forward the Middle East peace process, take effective measures to ensure the general election and support the economic reconstruction of Palestine and create favorable conditions for the resumption of peace talks. China appeals that the international conference on the Middle East issue under the auspice of the UN Security Council should be held as soon as possible. As a permanent member of the Security Council, China will take active part in the peace promotion efforts of the international community and continue to play a constructive role in realizing the all-round, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.

Following the meeting, both sides attended the signing ceremony of bilateral economic and technological cooperation agreement and jointly met journalists.

Upon arriving at Ramallah, Tang visited and laid a wreath at the mausoleum of the late Palestinian leader Arafat.