DUBLIN -?Irish President Mary McAleese met here Thursday with senior Communist Party of China (CPC) official Zhang Gaoli, with both sides pledging to deepen bilateral ties.

McAleese said both Ireland and China enjoy increasingly fruitful cooperation in various fields such as politics, economy and trade, education and culture and have become each other's important cooperation partner.

She said Ireland is ready to benefit the two peoples by further deepening its cooperation and friendship with China.

For his part, Zhang, who is leading a CPC delegation for a visit to the island country, hailed the smooth development of Chinese-Irish relationship since the two countries established diplomatic relations over 30 years ago.

Ireland is the first leg of Zhang's ongoing four-nation tour which will also take him to Oman, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

He said the relationship has become a model of countries that have different territory sizes, different social systems and different cultural traditions but co-exist in a friendly way.

Recent years have witnessed new achievements of cooperation between the two countries in areas like politics, economy, culture, education and tourism, said Zhang, who is a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and secretary of the CPC Tianjin Municipal Committee.

China is willing to work together with Ireland to deepen political mutual trust, increase mutual understanding, upgrade the level of economic and trade and people-to-people and cultural cooperation, thus bringing the relations between the two countries to a new high, he said.