Taiwan failed in its ninth bid to be included in the World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday as the World Health Assembly (WHA) decided not to list Taiwan's WHO bid on its agenda.
After a three-hour long debate on whether to include Taiwan in the WHA's agenda, the WHA's General Committee ruled to exclude the sensitive issue.
During the discussion in the General Committee yesterday, 54 countries spoke up on the issue. Twenty-one countries voiced their staunch support for Taiwan, whereas 33 countries opposed the nation's bid.
Remarkably, two nations without diplomatic ties with Taiwan -- Fiji and Papua New Guinea -- also backed Taiwan's bid.
Meanwhile, on Sunday Malawian Health Minister H.M. Ntaba cast some light on the memorandum of understanding which China and the WHO Secretariat signed to facilitate technical exchanges between Taiwan and the WHO.
According to Ntaba, WHO Director-General Lee Jong-wook told a meeting of Commonwealth health ministers that China accepted Taiwan's participation in the WHO, but only as part of China.
Although he did not unveil all details of the memorandum, Lee spent around six minutes introducing it at the beginning of the routine meeting of Commonwealth health ministers on Sunday.
The memo states that Taiwan can only seek technical assistance from the WHO via China, and that the WHO cannot send medical experts to Taiwan without Beijing's permission, Ntaba told Taiwanese reporters before a dinner banquet with delegates of Taiwan's diplomatic allies to the WHA.
"Lee said he hoped the health ministers understood that we now have a chance of getting Taiwan to participate in the WHO," Ntaba said.
After Lee's introduction of the memorandum of understanding, Ntaba raised the question of why the WHO did not discuss the memorandum with Taiwan.
"You must speak to Taiwan and tell us what Taiwan says about it," Ntaba told Lee.
Lee, however, evaded Ntaba's question by saying he would not spend the whole meeting talking about Taiwan.
The way Lee raised the topic of the memorandum of understanding was strange, Ntaba said.
"He was not asked about it. He did not have to talk about it. It was not on the agenda," the health minister said.
Ntaba said Lee probably mentioned the issue because he wanted to "test the waters."
also see stories:
Taiwanese support WHO bid in Geneva
China tries to explain memorandum
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
A former television news host and six military personnel — active and retired — have been indicted on espionage charges, Kaohsiung prosecutors said yesterday. Lin Chen-you (林宸佑), a former CTi News host and YouTuber, last year allegedly made videos at the direction of a Chinese agent criticizing the Democratic Progressive Party’s recall campaign, the Ciaotou District Prosecutors’ Office told a news conference in Kaohsiung. He allegedly received 4,325 tether coins for the videos from an unidentified person surnamed Huang (黃), believed to be an agent of a hostile foreign power, they said. Lin, also known as Ma Te (馬德), has a show named
RSS