The delegation of the Chinese National People's Congress (NPC) concluded its 12-day visit to the United States on October 23 in San Francisco.

　 During their short stay in San Francisco, the NPC delegation, led by Chairman of its Foreign Affairs Committee Zeng Jianhui, met Mayor Willy Brown and held a discussion with scholars of the Stanford University on Sino-US relations.

　 The NPC delegation, the first one to visit the country at the formal invitation of the US Congress in a decade, also visited Washington D.C., New York and Houston and was warmly welcomed by the US side.

　 The delegation held four rounds of talks on issues of common interests including Sino-US relations, economic and trade cooperation and regional security with the US-China Inter- parliamentary Exchange Group consisting of 15 Republican and Democratic legislators of the US House of Representatives on the Capitol Hill.

　 "The talks have enhanced our mutual understanding, expanded our common ground and established a channel of regular communications between the parliaments of the two countries," a spokesman of the delegation said.

　 The delegation members also met with senators and senior officials from the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon, and all the officials stressed the importance of developing friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries.

　 Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, while meeting with the delegation in his office in New York, pointed out that a sound US-China relationship is important not only to China, but also to the United States.

　 Kissinger said it is important for the US government to abide by the three communiques governing Sino-US relations in dealing with bilateral relations with China.

　 In Houston, Zeng Jianhui, who is also a member of the NPC Standing Committee, delivered a speech on the prospects of economic and trade relations between the two countries to leaders of famous enterprises from South America at a luncheon hosted by the US-China Business Association of the Texas State.

　 The entrepreneurs appreciated the achievements China has made in its economic construction and opening to the outside world and expressed full confidence in increasing investment in China.

　 Mayor of Houston Brown Li, who visited China in February this year, told the Chinese delegation that the city, as a high-tech center in the United States, is ready to expand cooperation with China in various fields.